Black swans, Black crows and Fund lies
In our conversations with investors, we find the emphasis is largely around returns and very little attention is paid to risk. In this piece, Ajit Dayal, who is not one to pull his punches, especially when it comes to the mutual fund industry, brings out the perils of not using risk-adjusted returns in the context […]
Little Champs Punch Hard When It Matters
The historical underperformance over extended periods (2005-19 and 2005-17) of the BSE SmallCap index relative to the Nifty/BSE500 despite higher volatility/drawdowns highlights that the odds are stacked against small cap investors unless they invest in clean well-run small cap companies. We follow a robust investment process combining our quantitative frameworks and qualitative diligence to shortlist […]
How to tap into creativity during lockdown
It is said that crises bring the best out of humanity. Whilst the world is looking forward to many innovations coming up on the back of this lockdown, this applies equally to the individual level itself. Especially in the creative field, social distancing actually isn’t such a bad deal. Alone time can give people the […]
The World Is Still Producing More Oil Than It Needs. Why?
As humanity’s love for automobiles grew, in turn pushing up the demand and therefore price of oil, supply side response came from offshore drilling to fracking of shale oil. That’s intuitively expected. However, when the world went into lockdown and demand for oil fell taking down prices to even negative territory as there wasn’t enough […]
Closing schools for covid-19 does lifelong harm and widens inequality
The lives vs livelihood debate has become louder through the lockdown across the world with increasing calls to ‘reopen the economy’. But much of these calls have been towards helping the economically less fortunate to get back to a means of livelihood. In other cases, helping small businesses which don’t have the wherewithal to survive […]
The staggering rise and incredible fall of a billionaire
Whilst all of us have read about what happened in Café Coffee Day or Gitanjali or Amtek Auto or DHFL or IL&FS, it is rare to read about an accounting blowup in the NRI community let alone a blowup which makes local Indian promoters look like babes playing in the wood. This ET story profiles […]
The economic crisis will expose a decade’s worth of corporate fraud
Every single day in Marcellus we tell our clients that at least 80% of Indian companies have suspect accounts. Further, as we have explained in this blog – https://marcellus.in/blogs/accounting-fraud-and-liquidity-crunches-are-bedfellows/ – in a crisis may of these companies find that their time is up. In the article, the Economist makes a similar point for the world at large: “Booms […]
Enduring Greatness in a Disrupted World
The frequency of disruptions faced by businesses has been rising over the past three decades. While most of these disruptions have been around technology, an event like Covid-19 will also be added to this list. While such events can potentially topple market leaders, Consistent Compounders use these events to disrupt their competitors. Key characteristics which […]
How a pandemic affects mental health
Much has been written about the rise of mental illnesses caused by the fear of pandemic and exacerbated by the depressing effects of a lockdown. But this piece by Utkarsh Amitabh hits the nail on the head by highlighting common issues that most of us can relate to and hopefully can do a better job […]
Disney+ has a big fan: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings
We have often found that CEOs who build great businesses tend to have utmost respect for their competition. In what promises to be the mother of all rivalries, the crowded video streaming industry features the punch up between perhaps the greatest entertainment company ever – Disney versus perhaps the greatest disruptor of all time – […]
It’s time to build
Marc Andreessen, perhaps ranks right up there with a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs in terms of having an impact on humanity in the digital age. Andreessen is best known as the founder of Netscape, the company that gave the world the tool to make the best of the internet – the browser. He […]
For more content on our strategy, visit the archives GO TO ARCHIVES