Jack Bogle: the selfless preacher of the passive revolution
Featured in the 20th January edition of 3L&3S We had to pay our respects. And the FT Editorial does the job in a nice, succinct way. Jack Bogle, the father of passive investing, arguably the most impactful innovation in the investment management industry, passed away last week. The editorial aptly starts by quoting Noble Prize-winning […]
Avoiding Stupidity is Easier than Seeking Brilliance
Featured in the 5th May edition of 3L&3S Farnam Street’s reiteration of its 2014 blog about a concept that we encounter everyday in our interactions with prospective clients. Most of us are enamoured with the hunt for undiscovered value or the big thematic plays that can go onto become multi-baggers, when portfolio after portfolio we […]
Return on Capital Super Heroes
Featured in the 2nd June edition of 3L&3S American fund manager, Tom Machperson of Nintai Partners, highlights something that many of us who manage money know but never fully acknowledge i.e. “Managers who are frugal, both in their personal lives and in their compensation, generally run companies with higher returns on capital than those overseen […]
Adm. McRaven Urges Graduates to Find Courage to Change the World
Featured in the 2nd December edition of 3L&3S As a start-up, we run into people every now and then who try to use their muscle to put us in our place. In the narrow context of our lives and in the broader context of the world we live in, we loved this commencement speech given […]
Can an algorithm determine just how rich an Indian is merely from their name?
William Shakespeare famously wrote in Romeo and Juliet “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Turns out, there is actually a lot that can be gathered from the name, at least going by Rishabh Srivastava’s big data analytics story on Scroll. Rishabh is the […]
This Is the Beginning of the End of the Beef Industry
This should bring cheer to those disappointed with the beef bans in places across India. The plant-based meat technology has received a shot in the arm with the USFDA clearing the use of soy leghemoglobin, a protein-based color additive uses to make the Impossible Burger “bleed” like real meat. This piece by Rowan Jacobsen in […]
Winner-Take-All Phenomenon Rules the Stock Market, Too
At the core of Marcellus’ Consistent Compounders investment philosophy is identifying monopolistic franchises which dominate their industries for long periods of time. Therefore, the returns from the stocks in those sectors are also likely to be concentrated around these monopolies. Commentators on the Indian stock market have also recently lamented that returns have been restricted […]
Was the Automotive Era a Terrible Mistake?
Indian auto stocks have taken a serious beating off late with concerns not just on the current cyclical decline in sales (perhaps the industry’s worst ever downturn) but also the threat of disruptions for the future – electric, autonomous, ride-sharing, etc. Well, the concerns are global in nature and perhaps the history of automobiles can […]
The Stock-Buyback Swinde
This well written article says that American corporations are spending trillions of dollars to repurchase their own stock. “The practice is enriching CEOs—at the expense of everyone else.” It wasn’t always thus – buybacks are a recent fad. “Before the 1980s, corporations rarely repurchased shares of their own stock. When they started to, it was […]
Being Market Savvy Doesn’t Help Very Much
Published on:7 August, 2019 The Government of India allowed Marcellus to incorporate as a private limited company on 7th August 2018. We have enjoyed serving our 500 clients – in India and abroad – over the past year. We thank our clients for their support and aim to continue compounding their wealth for many years to […]
Page Industries – Why do we continue holding it in our portfolio
Page’s promoters have used their experience in the Philippines to fortify Page’s moats around: a) product differentiation based on in-house manufacturing in a labour-intensive industry; b) aspirational brand recall using Caucasian models in high-impact advertising campaigns; and c) IT investments and control on the distribution channel to manage a wide spectrum of products. Whilst these […]
The RBI Can Reverse the NBFC Crisis
Published on:30 July, 2019 Indian NBFCs are struggling not because of lack of liquidity in the system but because the money market has lost faith in most NBFCs’ balance sheets and in the credit rating agencies’ ratings. Hence rather than cutting CRR/SLR/repo rate, the RBI should vet the balance sheets of the NBFCs and make […]
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