The Gospel According to Peter Thiel
Love him or hate him, you cannot deny that Peter Thiel has been for some time now one of the most prescient thinkers in the world and someone who has the courage to back his convictions with cold hard cash. As Ms Burton says in this superb essay: “With a net worth of approximately $2.3 billion, […]
Inside the Mind Of the Indian Monopolist
All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition – Peter Thiel in ‘Zero to One ‘, (2014) Peter Thiel in his bestselling book, Zero to One (2014), compared Google with America’s airlines industry. He highlighted that the US airline […]
Playing the Market Has a Whole New Meaning
Every now and then we run into a prospect who at the end of the meeting would ask for a stock tip as a parting gift of sorts. Some of them are self professed punters who fully recognise they are just pandering to their gambling instincts and therefore dabble a bit rather than bet their […]
How to Feed Crowds in a Protest or Pandemic? The Sikhs Know
Amidst the pandemic and riots of 2020 when nothing seems to be going particularly right, the Sikh community in the US is quietly going about feeding thousands of people in need for free, showing the better side of humanity. The article talks about the aspect of selfless service that is an essential part of Sikhism. […]
The ‘Don’t Worry, Make Money’ Strategy Trouncing The Stock Market By 30 Percentage Points
At Marcellus, we embrace the risk minimisation approach to investing which reflects our team’s highly sceptical view of most things in the market. Whilst scepticism does help avoid loss making prospects, it does sometimes lead to passing on potentially money-making opportunities. Here’s a century old investment firm which is taking the opposite approach of positive […]
The Looming Bank Collapse
One key difference between the current Covid crisis and the 2008 Lehman crisis, often cited by experts, is the fact that the crisis then emanated from the financial system and then hit the real economy whilst this is just a health crisis hurting the real economy through lockdowns temporarily and in fact that the financial […]
On Days of Disorder [Or why do Riots Happen?]
Over the past decade a long held tragic Indian custom, the communal riot, has made a comeback. In parallel, we have now seen protesters on the streets of Hong Kong for most of the past year and now we have the race riots in the US – another country with a tragic history of rioting […]
“The Decade of Design”: How the last 10 years transformed design’s role in tech
One of the most interesting aspects of professional life is that whatever skill is currently the rage – the skill that everybody and their parents want to learn – is highly likely to be a commoditised skill five years hence. Conversely, skills which are not just rare today but also are generally harder to acquire […]
Risk Minimisation is Central to Making Returns in Small Caps
An analysis of BSE Smallcap’s performance over CY10-19 indicates that sharper falls (drawdowns) during market downturns and higher frequency of such falls are key reasons for its relative underperformance vs Nifty and BSE500. Therefore, the need to protect capital in a downturn is equally, if not more, important than chasing returns. Put simply, compounding from […]
Zoom fatigue is real — here’s why video calls are so draining
Despite the lockdown, most people we speak to claim to have busier than normal schedules, thanks to Zoom or the ease of video conferencing in general. However, it turns out it isn’t that easy. People are complaining of ‘Zoom fatigue’. Whilst we no longer have to fight the commute fatigue, the back to back endless Zoom calls are […]
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