Why India faces a public funding crisis
Rathin Roy is perhaps one of India’s finest macro economists currently. He made headlines last year for suggesting that India could be heading into the middle-income trap if things weren’t fixed soon. In this logically argued piece with plenty of data in the Mint, he relieves most of us of our misery of anticipating what could be […]
The Investor’s Fallacy – Why Markets are Never “Due” for Anything
“In God we trust, others must bring data” is a quote attributed to Deming. But Nick Maggiulli is perhaps one of the most ardent followers of that. In this piece, Nick uses long term data to show why the fact that the US stock markets have had a great run in the past decade doesn’t […]
Tomorrow’s industries: from OLEDs to nanomaterials
In his incredibly fascinating book Loonshots, Safi Bahcall discusses how serendipity plays a role in most big inventions. This aspect is even more accentuated in the field of material science. As this piece by Neil Savage in Nature shows, humans have always explored the different properties of various materials available on the planet to solve a […]
Why every company needs a Chief Fun Officer
It is worth ignoring the puerile title of this piece and focusing on the more substantive point made by the piece: “Besides making working lives more enjoyable, there is strong evidence that fun in the workplace packs a powerful punch in terms of organisational benefits. For example, I researched the restaurant industry (in collaboration with John Michel from […]
Manchester United Is the General Electric of Football
This article draws an interest parallel between capital allocation in the corporate world and that in the world of football in the specific context of GE and Manchester United. The author contends that “Like GE, the club once dominated its field but has lately chucked away its cash on terrible acquisitions.” So, how did these two […]
How the Nifty will change in the coming decade?
20 of today’s Nifty constituents are highly likely to be booted out over the next decade. We outline how you can identify the exits (relatively easy to do) and the entrants into the Nifty (a little harder to do) over the next decade. If you are good at spotting the 20 entrants into the Nifty […]
What’s in the Forecast: Private Weather Predictions
The movie industry globally has had this Sci- Fi sub-genre “Climatic Apocalypse” movies, which gained momentum in the 90s and is still profitably milking it. If you watch them again (and tone down the magnitude and special effects) you will find it is more relatable and it is happening for real. Eerily unravelling like Nostradamus […]
Phil Fisher: The Art of Holding On
At Marcellus, we believe that identifying a great company is hard enough, selling them is harder and continuing to hold them for long is hardest. Phil Fisher is a legend in the world of investing and had a similar investment philosophy of identifying great compounders and holding them for long. He is the man who […]
How Slack ruined work
Technology has made the world smaller & closer but there is a flip slide to it. Instant messaging apps like Slack, WhatsApp and others have changed the way we communicate with each other. Today, people feel more comfortable in picking up the phone and messaging rather than meeting face to face or getting on a […]
China Spins a Trade-Deal Trap in Bad Debt Market
Like India, China’s financial system is also grappling with a mountain of bad debts which now stands at a staggering USD 319bn. China has found a silver lining in the trade war with America by opening its struggling financial sector to US institutions by allowing them to apply for asset management licences. Previously, foreign investors […]
Boeing Hands Over Internal Employee Messages Describing 737 Max as “Designed by Clowns”
A month ago we highlighted a long essay on how Boeing went from moated CCP-type franchise to a company run by cost cutters. Last week, even as news broke of Boeing’s CEO being shown the door, Slate published another piece which sheds more colour on the descent of this once luminous franchise. The piece is […]
A World Without Pain: Does Hurting Make Us Human?
Joanne Cameron, a 72-year old retired school teacher living in a village in the Scottish Highlands, suffers from a rare genetic mutation. An Indian doctor – who used to work in the Indian Navy and now works for Britain’s NHS – upon discovering this mutation realised that Ms Cameron’s rare condition (which has never been […]
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