Long read: As govt starts rolling back Quality Control Orders, a look at adverse impact they had, mainly on MSMEs
Around a decade ago, Indian businessmen who found themselves in a position to influence policy had a clever idea – they convinced the powers that be in New Delhi to start blocking Chinese imports by using Quality Control Orders (QCOs). Whilst the perpetrators of these QCOs then got rich behind artificially erected non-tariff trade barriers, […]
Three Years In: Staying Objective Through Market Extremes
The Global Compounders Portfolio (GCP) is Marcellus’ Global Equities strategy launched in October 2022. It invests in 30-40 deeply moated companies across developed markets—businesses that combine high returns on capital with prudent reinvestment and disciplined capital allocation. The aim has always been straightforward: to deliver long-term compounding of capital through ownership of exceptional franchises, while […]
Short read: Three AI Megadeals Are Breaking New Ground on Wall Street
Plenty has been said and written about the unprecedented data centre capex boom but even if the end seems familiar, no one knows how or when. Enter Wall Street. If the incestuous deals between Nvidia, OpenAI, Oracle, etc seemed innovative enough, this piece in the WSJ throws light on three financing deals which shows Wall […]
Short read: Long degeneracy
In the recent past, we have featured pieces around issues plaguing society ranging from wealth inequality to social media driven envy to short video addiction to shortening attention spans to a growing penchant for instant gratification through punting on everything from options to prediction markets. This piece links all of it to conclude why humanity […]
Short read: Most Top Indian Institutions Drop in QS Asia 2026 Rankings, China Surpasses India in University Tally
Those of us in Marcellus who have been interviewing Indian university graduates over the past 20 years have seen a marked deterioration in the quality of these graduates. Part of the reason for this is the deterioration in the quality of India’s universities. This can also be seen in the declining global rankings of India’s […]
Long read: How Airbus took off
At a time, when the rest of the world is threatened by its reliance on American or now increasingly Chinese stranglehold on key technologies, this comes as an interesting case study of how a multi-polar world could collaborate to counter the might of the hegemons. Airbus, the European aircraft manufacturer is a result of one […]
Long read: Will quantum be bigger than AI?
Zoe Kleinman is the BBC’s technology editor and, in this article, she simplifies for non-experts like us what quantum is and why it can change the world profoundly for both better and worse. She writes: “….quantum mechanics – a strange and partly theoretical branch of physics – is a fiendishly difficult concept to get your […]
Long read: How a warmer world is making pregnancy riskier
In this remarkable piece of science reporting, Sarah Neville of the FT reports on an alarming new mystery that scientists have stumbled upon, namely, the strong (and rising) correlation between warmer temperatures and higher risk of pre-term (or premature) births. She calls this “a scientific mystery that some experts believe is turning, almost unnoticed, into a […]
Short read: Jaspal Bhatti would be an ‘anti-national’ today — satirist who always punched up, not down
Those of us in Marcellus who grew up in the 1980s watching Doordarshan, find it hard to get to forget Jaspal Bhatti, not least for his satire of the IPO market of that era immortalised in this video of the mythical PP Waterballs IPO – see here. Tina Das of The Print reminisces about the legendary […]
Short read: Never mind your children’s screen time. Worry about your parents’
At a recent Diwali family gathering, it was gut-wrenching to see one’s septuagenarian uncles and aunts who once enjoyed their banter in the real world, hooked on to their screens, doom scrolling on a short video app. As the subject of this piece suggests, some of us have been struggling to control our kids’ screen […]
Short read: ‘Scamlands’: How India became the frontline of global fraud
Scams are not new. But whilst digitisation has brought in unparalleled transformation especially with financial inclusion, it has also resulted in financial fraud becoming rampant in India that many of us have been victims of, but few acknowledge. That in itself is sometimes the safety net for a fraudster. Snigdha Poonam whose first book ‘Dreamers’ told the incredible […]
Long read: Never Bet Against America
By the time this hits your inbox, we may have heard more about the US-China trade deal as the leaders of two countries parley in Busan, South Korea. But the popular opinion for now is that China is winning the trade war as seen with the multiple rollbacks from Trump and most recently China flexing its might […]
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