The ideal team size for a money manager to beat the market
Michael Mauboussin, director of research at BlueMountain Capital Management, has conducted a study which looks at the ideal team size for an asset management firm seeking to beat the market. He finds that funds managed by a team do better than funds managed by a single individual. That begs the question “What is the ideal […]
Can we break our addiction to plastic? The future of packaging
This video on Youtube of a marine conservation biologist trying to help a sea turtle relieve of a plastic straw up its nostril went viral with 38m views. Similar gut wrenching videos of vast swathes of plastic dumped in the ocean – the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (supposedly twice the size of Texas) – have inspired some people to […]
Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They’re Not Keeping It Secret
If there’s one thing that has made smartphones the gamechanging tech of our lifetimes, it is the use of location data – think Amazon’s delivery efficiencies or ride sharing or food delivery, etc. Whilst all these are examples of how businesses and consumers alike have benefited from the technology, there is a dark side to […]
Are anti-competitive firms killing American innovation?
When the economist, Thomas Phillipon, moved to America in 1999, he found a country where high quality products were available at “dazzlingly cheap” prices. “But over the past two decades, Mr Philippon writes in “The Great Reversal”, this paradise has been lost. Europeans now enjoy cheap cross-continent flights, high-street banking, and phone and internet services; Americans […]
What comes first – Strategy or Structure?
The former US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, famously said, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” A robust military structure built on the foundations of unswerving training and a disciplined approach is one that is believed to win wars. This […]
The man who made the “worst” video game in history
We know of companies who have shot themselves in the foot going for instant glory and in the bargain sacrificing sustainability. Here’s an example of an entire industry – video gaming, which back in the 80s was bigger than Hollywood and pop music combined went bust, thanks to the mad rush for riches. Centrestage was […]
The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius
Paul Graham is an investor, especially known for having founded Y Combinator, a successful incubation platform in Silicon Valley, having incubated companies such as Airbnb, Drobbox, Doordash, etc. In this particularly insightful blog, Paul highlights the need for obsessive interest in a subject as a key ingredient for success, especially the creative kind of success. […]
How headphones are changing the sound of music
David Byrne’s book “How Music Works” talks about how music composition has a context to it. “For example, he explains that medieval European music was often harmonically simple because playing lots of notes at once sounded terrible in cathedrals, and that trumpets were common in early jazz because the instrument’s high frequency could be heard over a talkative […]
Why is Taking Action Hard?
As we approach the New Year, many of us are getting ready with our list of resolutions. Some of us will successfully follow through. Some of us will valiantly fight until we give up and likely push it into another New Year or any other such milestone event. It is normal to procrastinate as we […]
Expect the Roaring ’10s for Stocks to Repeat in the ’20s
This piece uses a very useful framework created by John Bogle for his classic book published 30-years ago (titled “Bogle on Mutual Funds”). In that book, Bogle shows that you can decompose the investment returns generated by the stockmarket into 3 segments): dividends, earnings growth and growth in P/E. Nir Kaissar uses this framework to […]
The importance of accounting quality
45% of the stocks which were in the BSE500 ten years ago have exited the index since. The primary driver of these exits is shoddy corporate governance and poor capital allocation (the two are linked). In contrast, the number of companies which have significantly enriched their shareholders are a handful. Inspired by Howard Schilit’s legendary […]
Parallels between investing and software development
At first glance, software development and investing seem to be poles apart. But we find a common and interesting thread in the process that investment managers and software developers follow. The first public release of the Android operating system (OS) for mobile phones was in 2008. The most recent version is its sixteenth, meaning an […]
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