I saw the making of Cheteshwar Pujara
From patience in maths to patience in life and on the cricket field, this outstanding piece on Cheteshwar Pujara has to be read and savoured. The author, Sandeep Dwiwedi, grew up with Pujara in the Indian Railways compound in Rajkot. He saw the grind that the now legendary test batsman’s parents – Arvind and Rina […]
Volatility: how ‘algos’ changed the rhythm of the market
The single most frequently asked question to a stock market professional is “where do you think the markets are headed?”. A seemingly more pertinent question asked by clients is “shouldn’t we wait for xyz event (election, rate hike, missile launch, etc) for a better entry point?” Our own experience as market participants have made us […]
Shareholders dethroned as rulers of value
In this sublime essay, John Plender explains how capitalism has changed in the last 100 years and the implications it has for how companies will be run henceforth. “When Thomas Edison’s General Electric was at its most innovative in the late 19th and early 20thcentury, manager and proprietor were one and the same. Control rights in the […]
Marcellus: Reading VS Naipaul Will Make You Richer
Published on: 18 Jan, 2019 Intensely researched, well thought through non-consensus opinions are priceless. VS Naipaul’s final book on India is an example of such work. Meticulously researched, Naipaul’s 1990 book flagged that India was a country on the move and on the make. At a time when the norm was to berate India for […]
Why people prefer bad news
The article reinforces the subject of “Factfulness”, the refreshingly positive and fascinating book by the late Dr Hans Rosling about how we have a tendency to take a predominantly depressing view of the world when in reality it is exactly the opposite – the fact show as much – read Dr Rosling. Matt Ridley, who […]
Oat milk sales surge as more consumers go dairy-free
Milk from cows or from soya beans or almonds is passe. The new fad is milk from oats. “The scramble for oat milk is so intense that Oatly, a large Swedish producer, has been forced to delay production of certain products so that it can meet demand in existing markets such as the US and the […]
WhatsApp’s child porn problem: Google and Facebook’s ad networks funded apps that led users to groups on the private messenger that are dedicated to swapping illegal images
In case you thought that the worst thing about social media is that it allows facists and religious fundamentals to spread hatred, think again. In the last week of December two charities in Israel dedicated to online safety, Netivei Reshet and Screensaverz, published research showing that WhatsApp is now the favoured method to circulate child […]
IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
More of Taleb this week, this one is by Taleb. In his usual scathingly critical style, he has a go at psychologists and their use of IQ as a measure of intelligence with plenty of evidence showing the corelation is non-existent, except that lower IQ levels do prove mental disability. “…consider that if someone has […]
Bitter Bill – India’s transgender community is going to be policed by a bill which gives the Government the right to examine their bodies
In case you are on those people who spends her waking hours worrying what will happen in the next General Election or some other pressing matter of national import, here is a public policy issue which should make you sit up. The Lok Sabha has passed a Bill which says that when a parent or […]
Blowing up – How Nassim Taleb turned the inevitability of disaster into an investment strategy.
“Taleb runs Empirica Capital out of an anonymous concrete office park in the woods on the outskirts of Greenwich, Connecticut…. Empirica follows a very particular investment strategy. It trades options, which is to say that it deals not in stocks and bonds but in the volatility of stocks and bonds… Nassim Taleb and his team […]
Marcellus: Does Spirituality Help Improve Clarity of Thought?
Published on: 11 Jan, 2019 Any activity which entails making a call on the future is as much about managing emotions as it is about rational analysis. Investing therefore is always and everywhere a dance between these two elements – reason & emotion. We find that spirituality (i.e. reducing clutter in our lives, increasing focus […]
Retreat from private infrastructure projects
20 years ago there was lots of discussion in India about how to attract more private sector investment in infrastructure. Then between 2004-11 India saw a boom in private sector investment in infrastructure. For a variety of reasons that did not go down well with the public and with the banking system. So now again, […]
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