‘I feel free here’: how a miracle girls’ school was built in India’s ‘golden city’
We end this week’s edition with an inspiring story about how an artist and anthropologist from New York built a school for 400 girls in rural Rajasthan. “Rajasthan is one of the most conservative states in India, where ancient customs circumscribe a woman’s freedom and in turn any chance of economic independence. …[Michael] Daube, an […]
My Approach to Valuation
Abdullah Al-Rezwan is a young analyst who publishes some deep dive research on specific companies on his blog. In this piece, he shares his approach to valuation, a subject often misunderstood and misused. Abdullah brings out the limitations given the inexact nature of valuation as a science yet the importance of using it to improve […]
History shows that equities outperform under Democrats
The title of the article may be a bit misleading i.e, the author, who is the Chief Investment Strategist at Charles Schwab, doesn’t actually suggest one should get excited about a certain presidential candidate’s prospects of winning the elections from the market’s perspective. Infact, she reckons quite to the contrary – elections are by and […]
What Is The Internet Doing To Boomers’ Brains?
Social media has accelerated the creation and dissemination of fake news and misinformation, more so among older generations. Many of us have experienced our parents, uncles and aunts fall prey to this when they unwittingly post doctored images/videos or conspiracy theories on our family Whatsapp groups or on Facebook. This piece in the Huffington Post […]
How solitude and isolation can affect your social skills
In the wake of Covid-19 making many of us spend lots of time at home and by ourselves, psychologists have begun publishing research on what being by yourself does to your mind, your body and your behaviour: “It turns out there’s a link between the size of a primate’s brain, and size of the communities it […]
Opposition must think harder about political economy of protest to counter new political economy of reform
In this outstanding piece Pratap Bhanu Mehta highlights the BJP’s achievement over the past six months – whilst a lot of people had their heads buried in the sand on account of Covid-19 – of pushing through tricky economic reforms without losing too many votes and with the implicit support of corporate India. Mr Mehta […]
How CAPM has hurt a Generation of Indian Investors
The Capital Asset Pricing Model clearly does not work in India – neither in theory nor in practice – because in the Indian market, risk & return are negatively correlated i.e. lower risk leads to higher returns. Sophisticated investment theories can be damaging for your wealth Amongst the more delusional theories in Finance is the […]
The real lessons from Sweden’s approach to Covid-19
Sweden has gone from initially being hailed for the most liberal lockdown only to later on becoming the whipping boy for being so lax as cases and deaths per capita significantly exceeded its Scandinavian neighbours. Now with things back under control, here’s a piece in The Economist about how Sweden’s policy decisions are driven by […]
Use of fear: Witness protection in India
Whilst there are no prizes for guessing that most of Marcellus’ clients come from the most affluent strata of Indian society, it is actually touching how much faith many of us have in the judicial machinery of the Indian state. Whilst the recent brutality in Hathras might have awakened us city dwellers to the grim […]
HDFC Bank sitting upon $6-7 billion of excess liquidity: Aditya Puri
The outgoing CEO of HDFC Bank and the only one that the bank has had in its 26yr history, Aditya Puri, talks about some of the key issues concerning the bank and the economy in this interview with Nikunj Dalmia in The Economic Times. In line with the digitisation initiatives of the bank in the […]
Social Capital: 2019 Annual Letter
To continue with the theme of big technology monopolies, no better to get the perspective of someone who is a Silicon Valley insider and yet a critic of the monopolist winner takes all industry structure. Chamath Palihapitiya, the founder of venture capital firm, Social Capital, is known for his outspokenness about various issues, in particular […]
The 14 Juiciest Quotes From the House Antitrust Report
The Antitrust Subcommittee of the US Congress published a 400 page report a couple of months ago on the practices that Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon use to deal with competition. Wired has summarised some of the more interesting findings: Amazon: “…in response to the Committee’s request for “a list of the Company’s top ten competitors,” […]
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