Short read: Crosswords Reach Down and Across a Century
For those of us who enjoy our crossword puzzles, this is an interesting piece of history from a century ago, when the now ubiquitous puzzle became mainstream. It also helped give birth to a now well-known publishing company – Simon and Schuster. “Early in 1924, two young graduates of Columbia University, Richard Simon and Max […]
Short read: The rise of magnets – from surgery to outer space
Magnets are increasingly ubiquitous in modern life. Not only do they play a crucial role in EVs, they are also used in cochlear implants and in all sorts of surgical instruments (which in turn can be controlled remotely). Rollercoasters would struggle to operate without magnets as would rockets & satellites. We learn from this piece […]
Short read: Silence of the Wolves: How Human Landscapes Alter Howling Behaviour
Whilst the population of tigers is on the rise in India, the Indian wolf is facing all sorts of trouble as explained by this article by Sneha Mahale. Ms Mahale’s article says that India now has fewer than 3,100 wolves as the areas in which they live face encroachment. What’s even more tragic is how […]
Long read: Don’t Blame Indexing for Your Problems
Passive investing or investing in index funds has gained significant share over the past few decades at the expense of active funds (or funds which try and beat the market). Indeed, the rise in passive investing has also stemmed from the fact that increasingly a higher share of active fund managers are struggling to beat […]
Long read: Just how rich are businesses getting in the AI gold rush?
A couple of weeks ago, we featured a piece on what use cases for Generative AI enterprises are adopting since the emergence of ChatGPT. This piece in the Economist looks at which companies are making money by selling AI related hardware, software or services. It begins by helping us understand the four layers in the AI stack: […]
Long read: The new science of death: ‘There’s something happening in the brain that makes no sense’
One of the wonders of being alive in the modern world is that your personal mental model of the world around you is constantly being challenged as new insights & information emerges. This long read in The Guardian tells us that the line between life and death is not as binary as we thought it […]
How Will Tight System Liquidity Impact KCP?
Given consistently strong credit demand and weak deposit growth, we are now staring at a tough funding environment with banking sector credit to deposit ratio at an all-time high of ~80%. This funding environment along with consistent regulatory action will separate the men from the boys in the upcoming quarters leading to divergent growth outcomes […]
Short read: Could weight-loss drugs eat the world
Europe’s most valued company today is a pharmaceutical company – Denmark’s Novo Nordisk, valued at more than half a trillion dollars, having tripled in the last three years. All thanks to its wonder drug for weight loss, Wegovy, sales of which touched $4.5bn in 2023 up 5x over 2022. It’s closest competitor, Zepbound sold $2.9bn […]
Short read: The Psychologist Who Turned the Investing World on Its Head
Daniel Kahneman, the Princeton professor of psychology, who won the Nobel Prize in economics for his pioneering work in behavioral finance passed away last week. Here’s an obituary by Jason Zweig, the noted financial journalist who had a chance to observe Kahneman from close quarters when he worked on the initial drafts of Kahneman’s best […]
Short read: Indian Prisons Saw A Surge In Undertrial Prisoners Over A Decade
People like us who earn a living in India’s financial markets often rely on cliches like “India has an independent judicial system which delivers a modicum of law & order in this vast country” to convince foreign investors to direct their monies towards India. This data oriented article in IndiaSpend should give all of us […]
Long read: Parallel Tracks: observations from the Jade Empire (Part 1)
Whilst India might have replaced China as the fastest growing large economy in the world, China is in a totally different race altogether – the technology race with the world’s super-power, the US. Here’s a blog by a venture capitalist, taking stock of where the US and China stand on three key aspects of the […]
Long read: The Indian Giant Has Arrived
The star duo – one a famous investment strategist, the other a Nobel Prize winning economist – highlight three critical risks facing the Indian economy, risks which we believe are poorly appreciated in the broader investment fraternity. Firstly, India’s economic muscle in IT Services and its massive diaspora remitting money back home brings $350bn+ of […]
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