Long read: India’s shift to EV is making China richer. Over $7 bn paid in 5 years
In industry-after-industry where we claim to be making things in India, the reality is that we are importing the key parts from China, knocking them together into a finished product and then claiming to have indigenised manufacturing. This is why India’s trade deficit with China continues to grow year after year. Akansha Mishra’s well-researched article […]
Long read: A 960° turn in chess: Magnus Carlsen’s freestyle chess takes on FIDE’s rule-bound world
Professional chess faces its IPL moment. The Lalit Modi-type character here is German multimillionaire Jan Henric Buettner and bringing the Dhoni-style charisma to the party is the chess GOAT Magnus Carlsen. Jaideep Unudurti, a chess enthusiast, has written an entertaining article for the ET. He writes about the tussle between the new style of chess […]
Global Compounders: The Diversification “Free Lunch”
Marcellus’ Global Compounders Portfolio (GCP) strategically invests in 20-30 deeply moated global companies aligned with megatrends, fostering a consistent mid to high teens compounding of free cash flow/earnings. The US market has a track record of strong, earnings led returns despite modest GDP growth. This places it among the top performing markets globally over a […]
Short read: Study in India shows kids use different math skills at work vs. school
We have been featuring pieces on how our education system as it exists today is failing us with several graduates unemployable in the industry. A new study throws some light on this focused on very basic math skills. What we learn in the classroom and what the real world teaches us seem distinctly apart. This […]
Short read: Writes and Write-Nots
From Buffett’s letters to shareholders to Howard Marks’ memos and several others, there is a pattern of good investors also being good writers. As in most cases, the writing began as a ‘note to self’ of sorts, which is in some sense a practice of clarifying one’s own thinking. Most good writers write for themselves […]
Short read: The Visa Barrier That Restricts South Asians From Travelling The World
Did you know that “the European Union profits around €130 million per year through rejected visa applications, with African and Asian countries bearing the cost of paying for their own rejection. India alone paid €12,150,000 in 2023 in rejected short-term Schengen visa applications – the third highest cost of rejections following Turkey and Algeria…For a […]
Long read: How a tiny village became India’s YouTube capital
The fortunes of India’s world-famous Hindi movie industry Bollywood (once the main source of entertainment for most Indians, atleast outside South India) have been dwindling for quite sometime now. The explosion of Netflix and other OTT content is often blamed for this. But OTT subscriptions are still in tens of millions. The more ubiquitous source […]
Long read: How can the process of drug development be improved?
Dr Peter Attia is a bestselling writer and his outstanding communication skills mean that laypeople like us can understand complex medical developments without having to strain whatever few grey cells we have. In this blog, he explains how AI can bring down the cost of bringing a new drug to the market (a process which […]
Long read: Educated Dalits’—how these two words swung Bombay HC landmark verdict for 2 JNU scholars
The rise of new elites i.e. people from outside the established upper class is a now well-established feature of modern India. Indeed, this phenomenon is a central theme of our bestselling book “Behold the Leviathan: The Unusual Rise of Modern India” (you can buy it here ). Three decades before us, the late and (controversially) […]
CCP’s Earnings Have Compounded at 18% Per Annum
Marcellus’ CCP Portfolio has delivered 17.8% EPS CAGR over FY19-24 (computed using reported earnings of annual rolling portfolio cohorts), which is the primary driver of the portfolio’s 17.4% (pre-fees) portfolio performance over FY19-24 (15.35% net of fees and expenses). The changes made to the portfolio over time have enhanced its earnings profile. Additionally, in early […]
Short read: The case for easing banking regulations
Despite the recent correction in the stock market, we find most stocks still trading at significantly higher valuations than their historical averages. However, this doesn’t apply to one large sector – private sector banks. Whilst one of the reasons could be the resurrection of public sector banks from their high non-performing assets in the decade […]
Short read: What DeepSeek’s Success Says About China’s Ability to Nurture Talent
Whilst the US government and some parts of the tech industry led by OpenAI continue to undermine DeepSeek’s achievements basis claims about how DeepSeek possibly breached OpenAI’s terms of service by training its model based on the latter’s using a technique known as ‘distillation’, there is broader acknowledgement of DeepSeek’s prowess. Chinese tech stocks have […]
For more content on our strategy, visit the archives GO TO ARCHIVES