Learning from Great Investigative Writers
Published on: 5 September, 2019 Like investors, investigative journalists are paid to uncover undiscovered facts and perspectives. The best investigative journalists have the mental agility to deal with complexity & detail alongside the courage to acknowledge unpleasant realities. We seek to learn from four outstanding investigative writers – Steve Coll, Robert Caro, Ram Guha and […]
Athletes on the outskirts of fame
Last Sunday was yet another super Sunday for sport. India got its latest world champion in PV Sindhu who finally came won the World Badminton Championships after agonisingly coming second best in the previous two editions. Then Ben Stokes single-handedly pulled off a miraculous victory to keep the English in contention for the Ashes. Finally, […]
UPS Has Been Delivering Cargo in Self-Driving Trucks for Months And No One Knew
Most of the press around autonomous vehicles focuses on cars and yet it is in trucking that the most commercially viable advances in autonomous driving are being made. Last week we learnt that: “The self-driving freight truck startup TuSimple has been carrying mail across the state of Arizona for several weeks. UPS announced on Thursday […]
Long Term Compounding Using Low Volatility & Other Fundamental Factors
My colleagues Saurabh Mukherjea and Rakshit Ranjan co-authored a book titled Coffee Can Investing with a subtitle – “The Low Risk Road to Stupendous Wealth”. In this blog, Justin Carbonneau of Validea brings out a similar essence from the book High Returns from Low Risk: A Remarkable Stock Market Paradox, authored by Robeco fund managers […]
Blame Economists for the Mess We’re In
In his refreshingly positive book Factfulness, Dr Hans Rosling talked about how people across the world are living longer with average life expectancy globally now at 72yrs rising up form 60yrs in 1973. This trend was true for the United States as well until recently when it has started to decline. It turns out that […]
“He’s Full Of Shit”: How Elon Musk Fooled Investors, Bilked Taxpayers, And Gambled Tesla To Save Solarcity
Last three years have seen Elon Musk’s public perception slide from an iconoclast solving the world’s problems to borderline unhinged as his critics rise in number and intensity. Indeed, there is a common hashtag his critics use on Twitter – #TSLAQ with the first four letters being Tesla’s ticker symbol and the Q at the […]
The Red Queen of Investing
The author is yet another high-quality writer from the Ritholtz stable and he has produced a really interesting piece of how trading, like other aspects of life, has gradually become an arms race. He begins by using Darwin’s theory of evolution to lay out the basic concept: “Darwin is in the Galápagos Islands when he […]
Why consistent compounders outperform during market stress?
Marcellus’ Consistent Compounders portfolio has shown resilience since inception in 2018. This resilience is not uncommon for share prices of great companies. Over the past 2 decades, in stock market crashes,stocks like Asian Paints and HDFC Bank have, more often than not, delivered positive and healthy returns.More importantly, in the few instances that these stocks […]
Technology, for more than technology’s sake
Published on: 31 August, 2019 Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road – Stewart Brand, American Writer. In a few days from now, on September 7th, 2019, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is expected to land the Chandrayaan-2 on the Moon, joining […]
Collaboration Across Vast Networks: Lessons from the Marwaris
Published on: 27 August, 2019 The Marwari community serves as a case study of durable and extensive collaboration without the need for a dominant leader to oversee such an endeavour. This sort of community-based collaboration provides richer insights than B-School paradigms into why some teams succeed and others fail. “…read the sub-text and you […]
On floccinaucinihilipilification
Central banks’ influence on the global economy has been on the rise over the past few decades with ultra-low interest rates and unconventional monetary policies such as quantitative easing. Whilst they can be credited to have pulled financial markets up from the crises, their impact on the real economy remains a matter of debate. Growth […]
The Bond Raters Still Need to Be Fixed
Barry Ritholtz has written this article in the context of the US Financial Services industry but he might as well be talking about India given that India’s rating agencies have covered themselves with as much muck over the past four years as the US rating agencies did in the run-up to the Lehman crisis. For […]
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