The (Easily Misunderstood) Yale Model
This outstanding piece from the legend that is Charles Ellis provides a far deeper understanding of Yale’s famous endowment investment model – helmed by the equally famous David Swensen – than anything else we have read to date on this iconic investment model. Ellis starts with the basics by telling us why Swensen is a […]
IBM made IIT Kanpur what it is. It just returned the favour with CEO Arvind Krishna
In a world where those who don’t display bigotry vis a vis foreigners are not seen as real men, The Print has a lovely story on the role of IBM – and the United States more generally – in the creation of IIT Kanpur. And how that elite university has now returned the favour by […]
Quality Trumps “Cheap” Valuations Comprehensively
After falling by about 39% from its January 2018 peak to its August 2019 trough, the BSE Smallcap index has since returned 22%. This rebound has been fairly broad-based with >70% of the BSE Smallcap stocks giving positive returns. However, this rally does not seem to be backed by any meaningful improvement in the underlying macros and […]
1917 Is a Video Game Come to Life
It is the Oscars night. Hence, it is topical to feature a piece on a movie that is a front runner for winning the best picture award – Sam Mendes’ World War I movie, 1917. The movie has rightly received accolades for bringing out the dark brutality of war with intensity and impact. However, this piece […]
A matter of fact: New study shows how Indians respond to (mis)information on WhatsApp
Whilst user generated content or social media has had its benefits on access to information as well as quality and diversity in perspectives, it has its downsides too. In particular, the growing malaise of fake news or unqualified content, whether deliberately planted by vested interests or otherwise. And the ease of forwarding a whatsapp message or retweeting […]
New Thinking Emerges on Optimal Tenure for a CEO
At Marcellus, whilst we look for companies with institutionalised culture, systems and processes thereby reducing the reliance on a few key individuals, we do acknowledge the contribution of iconic CEOs towards building such an institution. Indeed, CEOs who have served longer tenures have had a lasting impact on their businesses. However, the rapidly changing technological […]
U.S. renters are richer, older, and have larger households
A week before Ben Carlson’s piece, this article came up in the Curbed coming at the income disparity challenge from a related yet diagonal perspective – also involving real estate. The article talks about a recent study which shows an increasing trend of relatively higher income people shunning home ownership and instead renting homes, almost […]
The rich own stocks, the middle class own homes. How betting it all on real estate is a wealth gap problem
Ben Carlson comes at the inequality challenge from an asset class ownership point of view. Over the last decade or so much of economic policy making such as quantitative easing has benefited owners of capital i.e, the rich with financial markets having their best decade. And hence contributed to the growing inequality between the have’s and […]
Old People Have All the Interesting Jobs in America
Tyler Cowen sheds light on an issue which has puzzled many of us over the past 20 years. Here is the conundrum: in the West, over the past 20 years, a peculiar trend has emerged wherein the brightest graduates aspire to enter Finance, Management Consulting and Law. (India too has seen the onset of this […]
Prudent Capital Allocation is Critical for Consistent Compounding
The most sustainable way for a firm to compound profits over the longer term, is to sustain high ROCE alongside a high rate of capital reinvestment. However, such businesses face the challenge of consistently finding avenues for incremental capital redeployment in areas which deliver high ROCE. Some of the most common capital allocation mistakes made […]
Security analysis at Columbia Business Schol
The last couple of decades have seen a new stream of sources of information and insight with the emergence of social media or user generated content. Whilst books, journals, periodicals and news papers have contributed immensely over time, blogs, Ted talk videos, podcasts, etc have become a rich supplementary source. Whilst we have featured most […]
The Revolution Comes to Davos
It is that time of the year when billionaires across the world come together at the Swiss ski resort town of Davos to ideate on how to make the world a better place. Tim Wu of the NY Times writes why the event is becoming increasingly farcical given the ironies involved. Last week, a meme […]
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