Long read: Why the sands of the Maldives and Lakshadweep are white
A few weeks ago following the election of Maldives’ new leader whose anti-India, pro-China foreign policy stance triggered a bit of a hue and cry in India about boycotting Maldives for tourism and instead promoting our very own Lakshwadeep which is endowed with similar pristine beauty. This fascinating article in The Mint shares how the […]
Long read: Venture Capital & Free Lunch
After a pretty strong run in the latter half of the last decade, the venture capital (VC) industry has come in for some flak, even becoming the subject of plenty of memes of social media when a lot of bets especially those made during the go go days immediately following Covid went horribly wrong. Here’s […]
Long read: Ancient India’s battle of ideas: Yudhisthira & Arjuna are ideal kings. Don’t be like Ashoka
For several decades now, Patrick Olivelle of the University of Texas at Austin, has been one of the most lucid exponents of how Indian history and religion interplays with each other. In this deeply moving piece he explains how key figures in Indian history have taken opposing stances on the same subject, namely, the use […]
The Mega Opportunity in Indian Megacaps
Although India’s 20 most profitable listed companies (the ‘Megacaps’) account for around 50% of the profits generated by the BSE 500 companies, these Megacaps account for just 34% of the BSE500’s market cap (down from 41% a decade ago and 45% nearly two decades ago). Indian retail investors’ fascination with SmallCaps seems to be the […]
Spotlighting Rainbow Children’s Medicare
In this month’s Little Champs newsletter, we delve deeper into Rainbow Children’s Medicare (Rainbow), one of the new additions to the portfolio. Rainbow, founded in Hyderabad in 1999 by Dr Ramesh Kancharla, focusses only on pediatric and maternity care. The Company stands head & shoulders above its like-to-like peers on profitability and growth metrics and […]
Short read: Despite working so hard, why does free time remain elusive?
Gary Cross is the professor of Modern History at Penn State University. In this piece, he raises an intriguing question in the context of modern American life but the question is equally applicable to middle class Indian life: “Output per worker increased by almost 300% between 1950 and 2018 in the US. The standard American […]
Short read: Arwi: The lost language of the Arab-Tamils
India’s history is incredibly interesting and full of surprises. Did you know that there exists a language which is written in Arabic script but the words are from Tamil? This language, Arwi, was spoken in the coastal towns of Tamilnadu and in Sri Lanka: “Arwi dates to the 8th Century CE when travel and trade in […]
Short read: MGNREGA Led to Decline in Gender Wage Gap, Increased Compliance with Minimum Wage Norms: ILO
Over the past year we have written several blogs about the rise in the fortunes of Indian women – urban & rural, skilled & unskilled – over the past decade (eg. The Rapid Rise of Female Entrepreneurs in India – Marcellus). Now, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has found that for rural women, NREGA has been […]
Long read: The words of Fali Nariman: Excerpts of his writings
Earlier this week, India lost one of its most eminent jurists, Fali Nariman, aged 95. Obituaries continue to pour in for who was regarded a legend by the legal fraternity. For some of us unaware of his accomplishments in the courtroom and in public life, these obituaries have been an eye opener. But we have […]
Long read: First electric cars. Next, electric factories?
With the significant decline in costs of producing solar and wind power, electrification is increasingly being looked at as a better solution than carbon capture and hydrogen to solve the world’s climate change problems. Automobiles are headed the electric way but this article shows why even heavy polluting industries such as chemicals, steel, cement, etc […]
Long read: The Practice Of Value Investing
Li Lu is best known as the fund manager who the great Charlie Munger himself trusted with his investments. The 3L&3S featured the incredible backstory to Lu’s life here. This one is a translated speech that Li Lu gave to students at a Chinese business school back in 2019. This speech apparently is a follow up […]
Rebalancing and the Value Effect
In this newsletter, we quantify the contribution of rebalancing to overall returns by breaking down the portfolio returns into sub-components. We find that periodic rebalancing drives most of the returns of systematic relative value strategies. Selecting quality, undervalued companies, as we do in MeritorQ’s selection step, is effective only when the portfolio is regularly rebalanced. […]
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