Facts Don’t Change People’s Minds. Here’s What Does
“When my information changes, I change my mind”, is an oft quoted statement, usually attributed to economist John Keynes. But Keynes clearly is an outlier. Confirmation bias makes people ignore data or information that counters their beliefs, and no matter how hard you try, your arguments, based on facts, will usually have no effect. This […]
Casper Dreams of Being Bigger Than Mattresses
If building a business with strong competitive advantages is tough, sustaining the competitive advantage is many degrees tougher. In retailing, the internet makes it relatively easy to replicate at scale, an existing business model. And this makes it tough for incumbents to protect their market share till the time they have built enough scale for […]
Why can’t we agree on what’s true anymore?
It is fashionable to believe these days that Trump, Putin, Modi, Xi, Erdogan, etc have ushered in a new era of right-wing politics wherein all of us being relentlessly subject to propaganda and our liberties are being curtailed. This piece in The Guardian questions this notion and says “It’s not about foreign trolls, filter bubbles […]
Marcellus: Excelling Amidst Disruption – India’s Khatri Community
Published on: 25 September, 2019 As tax evading businesses and investors in real estate stare into the abyss, we look at the forceful resurgence of a north Indian business community which was uprooted by Partition. The Khatris’ history is one of remarkable enterprise and outstanding success punctuated by politically motivated loot of their wealth. Today, with […]
The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving
An incredible piece in ESPN on what hours of playing chess can do to your body. Aishwarya Kumar highlights research that shows chess can be as stressful on the body as any other physical sport. The best part of the article however is about the fitness regime of the current world chess champion and a […]
His bus conductor mother praying back home, Atharva Ankolekar steers India to U-19 Asia Cup title
Once upon a time most of the cricketers in the Indian cricket (men’s and women’s) team came from the posh schools in India’s biggest cities. These schools had names like St. Xavier’s, St. Joseph’s, Don Bosco, etc. That era is fading away as kids in the posh schools in big cities spend their lives glued […]
Thomas Piketty Back With a 1,200 Page Guide To Abolishing Billionaires
It couldn’t have been a better week to be talking about inequality as Thomas Piketty’s new book “Capital and Ideology” is published in French (the English version isn’t due until next year). As the man who brought the inequality debate to the front and centre of all political and economic discourse with his award winning […]
Why rigged capitalism is damaging liberal democracy
Four weeks ago, the Business Roundtable, a group of CEOs from the world’s largest corporations issued a statement that corporates should move from just focusing on maximising value for shareholders to benefit a wider group of stakeholders – customers, employees, vendors and the community at large. This statement has reignited the debate against capitalism and the […]
He Is Trying To Play A Very Difficult Game”: The Once And Future Imran Khan
A fascinating piece in Vanity Fair about the contradiction that Imran Khan, the Pakistani cricketing superstar and now Prime Minister, has turned out to be. Pakistani author Aatish Taseer compares Imran’s relationships with women of contrastingly different backgrounds to his ambivalent political stances on Islamic extremism or Western influence. Whilst Aatish reckons some of this […]
How a Small-Cap Fund Weeds Out the Worst Stocks
At Marcellus, we are big fans of giant data-hungry quant screens which can rigorously sift through years of data on thousands of companies and give us a small set of 25-30 companies on which can do detailed qualitative research. Given such proclivities, we found this piece in Barron’s to be a really interesting read. The […]
Marcellus: Dissecting the Economic Slowdown in India
Published on: 17 September, 2019 Most of the drivers of the current slowdown appear to be transient and related to channel financing/GST credit issues. Understanding why the economy has slowed down at various levels (i.e. consumer, dealer, distributor, manufacturer) is central to investing sensibly in this time of flux. Whilst heavy repo rate cuts are needed, […]
Human Activity in China and India Dominates the Greening of Earth, NASA Study Shows
Amidst all the doom and gloom around how we humans are destroying the planet in the wake of the Amazon fires, here’s a refreshingly positive piece from earlier this year. According to data from NASA satellites, the world is literally a greener place than it was 20yrs ago. And surprisingly, the countries making the biggest […]
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