Wealthy, Successful and Miserable
A superb piece from Charles Duhigg about what leads to job satisfaction. Charles, a Pullitzer prize winner and the author of the brilliantly researched book – The Power of Habit, brings out the importance of meaning and purpose when it comes to our professional lives. “…a job is usually more than just a means to […]
Germs in Your Gut Are Talking to Your Brain. Scientists Want to Know What They’re Saying
Microbiomes are the trillions of microbes inside the healthy human body. This arresting New York Times article says that “Research continues to turn up remarkable links between the microbiome and the brain. Scientists are finding evidence that microbiome may play a role not just in Alzheimer’s disease, but Parkinson’s disease, depression, schizophrenia, autism and other conditions… […]
Marcellus: Exit the Kirana Store, Enter the Supermarket
Published on: 1 March, 2019 As local kirana stores start winding up in India, the conditions required for organised retail to operate profitably are coming together nicely. Whilst this does not necessarily mean that all organised sector retailers will be as profitable as a Titan or a Dmart or a Trent, it does mean that […]
Quantifying the futility of timing the market
Many investors try to time their investments basis the perceived impact of external events on either thebroader stock market or on the share prices of specific firms. Analysing the last 30 years of stock marketdata suggests that even if an investor were to perfectly time her investments in indices / good companieseach year, her returns […]
Marcellus: Non-Conformism Underpins Original Thought
Published on: 22 Feb, 2019 The more we get plugged into social & mass media, the harder it becomes to escape the echo chamber of consensus thought. In stark contrast, original thinkers – in Investing and beyond – have wide ranging interests beyond their profession, have a yearning to alter the status quo and a […]
How a Naga tribe is challenging cliched notions of advancement, backwardness
Vrinda Shukla in her beautiful and eye-opening article questions the definition of backwardness. Vrinda shares her experience of visiting one of the remotest parts of India – ‘Mon’, a picturesque district of Nagaland, running along the Myanmar border and considered to be one of the most backward districts in the country. Residents of Mon celebrated […]
Evidence deficit haunts billion-dollar brain trainers
In our quest to become smarter, many of us have to taken to using books, apps and trainers. In this piece, Anjana Ahuja says that there is no evidence that any of this stuff is actually of any use. “Scientists, though, have long been sceptical of the brain-training industry, forecast to be worth more than […]
The two tribes of working life
Office goers, says this column in The Economist, can be split into two groups. The first tribe are called FOMO: people who love meeting other people and who are haunted by the fear of missing out (FOMO) lest they don’t attend a meeting, a networking event or a business trip. The second tribe are called […]
India Proposes Chinese-Style Internet Censorship
The Indian Government’s proposed amendment to the IT act to regulate content on social media and messaging platforms has triggered a roaring debate among tech companies to freedom-of-speech activists to political parties. Whilst the headline of this NYT piece might have gone too far in comparing it with China (several countries including those from the […]
The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food
A six year old article but a fascinating one nonetheless about the science that gets us addicted to junk food. Michael Moss who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010 for his reporting on the meat industry, authored “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us”, a superb piece of investigative journalism, from which this […]
Tribal World – Group Identity is All
25 years ago Samuel Huntington had taught those who read his controversial book “The Class of Civilisations and the Remaking of the World Order” that all of us are tribal people and will ultimately focus on looking after our own. All our education and our reading is merely a façade said the great intellectual (who […]
Marcellus: The Nifty is No Longer a Play on the Indian Economy
Published on: 15 Feb, 2019 Over the past decade, the Nifty’s earnings have not only grown at a much slower pace than the Indian economy, they have also trailed the S&P500’s earnings growth by a country mile (although the Indian economy is growing much faster than the American economy). This disturbing phenomenon has far […]
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