Downside Protection > Upside Generation in Small Caps
The need of protecting portfolio value in a downturn is equally, if not more, important than chasing returns in a bull market. Compounding from a larger base generates higher returns than compounding at a faster pace from a much smaller base. Indeed, sharper falls (drawdowns) during market downturns and higher frequency of such falls are […]
Why Zuckerberg Wants Us All in the ‘Metaverse’
As the chart in this article shows, Google searches for ‘Metaverse’ shot through in August with references to it by some of the world’s most powerful people, most notably Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. This article by Scott Galloway, a Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern, first helps us understand what various people mean when they say […]
Here’s why Robert Shiller’s two stock-market indexes are telling wildly different valuation stories
Whilst PE multiples have limited ability to tell us anything about how richly or poorly valued a security is, especially for companies who consistently compound earnings over long periods of time, they weren’t particularly useful in valuing cyclical companies in the developed world either. This is because the PE would be understated as earnings rise […]
Elon Musk’s Trip Through Hell: Inside the 2018 Scramble to Avoid the Collapse of Tesla
Elon Musk is among the richest people in the world today with his company Tesla’s shares soaring through last year. Yet, it was as recently as 2018 that the company was struggling to make a profit, get its production schedule going and Musk himself embroiled in a punch up with the regulator. This dramatic turnaround […]
The perfectionism trap
We’ve been trained as kids and we in turn teach our kids to strive for perfectionism in everything we do. This approach to life has helped many of us in our achievements individually as well as helped humanity progress collectively. However, as ever, the approach to perfectionism has its downside, especially in terms of mental […]
Unethical? Unnecessary? The COVID-19 vaccine booster debate intensifies
Science Magazine is a highly respected source and authoritative source which non-experts like us can use to understand the latest developments and debates. In this piece Ms Vogel lays out the contours of what is bound to be raging debate over the next 12 month: is there a need for people who have received their […]
An Afghan tragedy: the Pashtuns, the Taliban and the state
Those who understand how closely the fates of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India are linked will enjoy reading this brilliant analysis of why Afghanistan has been and will be for some time to come a troubled country. The piece also raises powerful questions about whether the rest of the world – and especially the West – […]
The Power of Quantifying the Qualitative Aspects of Investing
Forecasts of the growth prospects of any business are based on several factors, many of which are qualitative in nature, such as management quality, capital allocation discipline, the ability to disrupt rather than be disrupted by unforeseeable events, etc. Investors who arrive at these decisions based on their personal beliefs or myths expose themselves to […]
The coming battle over the metaverse
Many of the digital aspects of our lives today would have seemed like science fiction even a couple of decades ago. Why, the way most of us, at least in the knowledge economy have taken to working online seamlessly through the pandemic is something few could have fathomed until recently. The buzz word these days […]
The Best Advantage in Life
Warren Buffet talked about the ‘ovarian lottery’ i.e, the biggest influence on the average human’s life will be the conditions of our birth – where you were born and who you were born to. In this piece, Nick Maggiulli drives home the point, as usual with research and data to back it. His post was […]
How Google bought Android
How Google built and retains its monopoly in search and uses the cashflows from search to expand into adjacencies is a case study in technology and business acumen alike. One such story is its acquisition of Android, the open source mobile operating system when Google had little to show in terms of its interest in […]
“This Is Going to Change the World”
This is a crazy story reminding us of the madness around the late nineties’ tech bubble, a story that got even the likes of Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, John Doerr and Harvard sucked into. It is a fascinating read about how Segway, the two wheeled personal mobility device, was hyped out of proportion by its […]
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