Replicating Buffet’s Wide Moat Investing Method
At Marcellus, we like the idea of using a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods for identifying firms with big moats. The author, an American fund manager, seems to be doing something similar in the US. Whilst we use YOY revenue growth and ROCE as our filters, he uses: “A decade of earnings predictability: Our Buffett model […]
How single women are driving gentrification in Hong Kong and elsewhere
All of us live with the knowledge the living in HK or London or even Bandra is an expensive affair. Many of us have elaborate financial theories for why this is so. This article comes up with a novel explanation for why living in the big financial & tech capitals of the major economies is […]
The humble zipper has profound things to tell us about international trade
Zip manufacturing is not the most often discussed industries in investor forums. Yet this article brings out some key insights about the implications of international trade on competitive intensity and more generally the competitive advantage and its implications on the consumers in the industry. We often think about pricing power as the manifestation of underlying […]
Thousands of Amazon Workers Listen to Alexa Users’ Conversations
Individuals’ right to privacy is one of the most intensely debated issues around the globe as technology has blurred the definition/meaning of privacy. Amazon’s Alexa has become very popular and has entered millions of homes across the world (78m smart speakers made Amazon, Google, etc were sold globally last year alone). Recent revelations that it […]
Two’s Are Now Underestimated – The Mikan Drill For Stocks
This is an interesting and rewarding long read from an investment advisory firm in Houston. The article uses the stats & the history of professional basketball in the US to draw analogies for stockmarket investing. The article appeals to us for the implications it has for our style of investing in well known, widely held […]
Marcellus: India’s Real Economic Dynamo – The Internal Migrant
Published on: 12 April, 2019 Over the last 40 years, India has seen the largest internal migration that any country has witnessed in any era. Even on conservative assumptions, India’s 100 million internal migrants are sending ‘home’ vast sums of money, eight times larger than the Government of India’s healthcare and education budgets combined. “Work-related […]
Mindfulness meditation in America has a capitalism problem
As scores of people across the world take to meditation as a tool to enhance mental health, this interview with David Forbes, a professor at Brooklyn college, brings out how even this could be falling prey to capitalism. Calm, a popular mobile app used for meditation is already a unicorn (valued at over a billion […]
Why Eating Meat Was Banned in Japan for Centuries
Whilst India goes through its own debate over beef, it is intriguing to know that for over 12 centuries, meat eating was considered taboo in Japan. This may come across as a surprise to some people who have found Japan to be the haven for quality beef or have seen other unconventional meat on menus […]
In Kolkata, home is where the drama is
Kolkata is witnessing a new type of theatre. Called site-specific theatre, these are plays which are staged in the city’s grand old homes. “Site-specific theatre, a term that The Guardian says has been gaining traction since the 1980s, refers to productions that are not in the traditional theatre space but grow out of the sites where […]
The Chinese takeover of Indian app ecosystem
Chinese mobile handset manufacturers dominating the Indian mobile devices market was not surprising given their dominance in manufacturing but Chinese apps taking over the Indian app ecosystem is a big surprise for many. Five out of the top 10 mobile apps in India are Chinese. Few reasons for the spectacular success of Chinese: deep pockets […]
The World’s Cheapest Hospital Has to Get Even Cheaper
The article begins with a description of Dr Devi Shetty, the founder & promoter of Narayana Hrudayalaya – a chain of heart centres and multi-specialty hospitals – performing a complicated heart surgery. “…pulmonary thromboendarterectomy, the surgery Shetty performed, can tie up an operating room for most of a day. In the U.S., the procedure can cost […]
DE Shaw: inside Manhattan’s ‘Silicon Valley’ hedge fund
In 1988, David Shaw, a computer science professor in Columbia University created a small company above a bookshop – Revolution Books – in New York City. That startup is today one of the largest hedge funds in the world – DE Shaw has US$50bn of assets under management. It is the fourth highest grossing hedge […]
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