Risk-reward arbitrage of investing in quality
The holy grail of investing in stock markets is to buy companies which can sustain a healthy ROCE with growing capital employed, thereby delivering consistent earnings growth over long time periods. In this newsletter, we divide the Nifty50’s constituents into three buckets – A (no moats), B (shallow moats), and C (deep moats) based on […]
Big Tech’s Invasion of Banking
Much is being written about disruptions in banking from fintech. Yet this piece suggests that the traditional banks have so far warded off that threat fairly well by innovating themselves using technology what with their deep pockets of capital and regulatory protections. This piece however focuses on the threat from Big Tech – not just […]
How to reduce digital distractions: advice from medieval monks
Most smartphone users can barely read a 1000 word essay without getting distracted or switching the screen a few times. Why blame the smartphone? Turns out that the human mind is inherently susceptible to distractions – digital or otherwise. In this piece, Jamie Kreiner shows how the medieval monks almost 1600yrs ago faced similar problems […]
How to Identify Talent: Five Lessons from the NFL Draft
From our (limited) knowledge of American Football we know that the quarterback is the key player (filling the role of a creative midfielder in soccer). This week the Cleveland Browns will choose a quarterback in the annual NFA draft. Whoever they pick will get US$30mn. So it is important that they make the right pick. […]
Driving? The Kids Are So Over It
Last week, we wrote about the disruptions caused by the millenials’ changing attitude towards real estate ownership – you can read that here. This piece talks about how it is no longer a done thing for kids in America to get a driving license, what that is doing to automobile sales and how the auto makers […]
How Darwin Though: The Golden Rule of Thinking
Charlie Munger had said in 1986 that there is a reason why Charles Darwin achieved extraordinary things without an extraordinary intellect:“Darwin’s result was due in large measure to his working method, which violated all my rules for misery and particularly emphasized a backward twist in that he always gave priority attention to evidence tending to […]
Traveling With Tagore
Ram Guha, himself a giant amongst contemporary scholars, makes a case for seeing Rabindranath Tagore as one of the ‘four founders of modern India’ alongside Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar. Guha begins by correctly noting that Bengalis and in particular the university that Tagore founded, Vishwa Bharati, have tried to appropriate for themselves this intellectual giant. “Ravi […]
Having Kids Is Terrible for Women’s Earning Power
This article quantifies what many of us have seen happening in our lives (or in the lives of our better halves). “At the beginning of their careers, men’s and women’s income are practically equivalent. By the time everyone’s in their mid-40s, women on average make as little as 55 percent of what men do. Claudia Goldin, […]
Netanyauism is Winning in Israel – and Globally
20 years ago for many non-Israelis, Israel looked like a strange country – a country created from the ravages of World War II by and for Jewish people, a country that seemed to be fighting the Palestinians almost perpetually. 20 years on Israel looks like everywhere else. The rest of the world seems to have […]
Elite men and inequality in the hedge fund industry
Megan Tobias Neely, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, tries to find the reason as to why firms run by white men manage 97 percent of hedge fund assets—a $3.55 trillion industry. Based on her work, Megan believes the answer lies in a system of patronage organizing the […]
How to Think About Taxing and Spending Like a Swede
Monica Prasad, a professor of sociology at Northwestern, discusses tax structures of various countries and its impact on reducing poverty and inequality. Sweden as a country has low poverty & inequality compared to other European countries and America. Whilst the average Swede falls under the high tax bracket (42.9%) compared to the average American (31.7%), […]
Marcellus: Our Habits, as Much as Our Brains, Drive Investment Decisions
Published on: 26 April, 2019 Even though habits account for 40% of the decisions that we make, the “thinking” part of the brain does NOT control our habits. Understanding the auto-reflex element of habit-driven decision making is central to nailing down why some promoters consistently allocate capital better than others. [Marcellus is offering internships to […]
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