Short read: Akbar’s treasury held glass vessels worth Rs 25 lakh. It came from Firozabad
We live in an era in India where almost everything is which of daily use which is valuable is either imported or bought to India in components and then bolted together by an Indian company. 500 years ago, India was very different. Some of the most precious daily use items were made in India then […]
Long read: Stan Druckenmiller: Inside the mind of a legendary investor
It is said that every investor inevitably has a rough patch, a period of weak to sub-optimal returns. Few demonstrate the consistency over long periods of time. But Stan Druckenmiller’s legend goes that he has NEVER had a ‘down’ year in his decades long career. The famed investor is most known for his ‘bet the […]
Long read: Iceberg A-68: The story of how a mega-berg transformed the ocean
We have all been told that global warming is because of excessive build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Here is a remarkable story from the BBC about how the disintegration of one of the largest icebergs ever seen might have actually reduced greenhouse gases. Michael Marshall writes: “In late 2016, scientists spotted a rapidly growing […]
Long read: The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books
Several of us in Marcellus squirrel away our modest savings for many years so that we can send our children to study in the US of A. However, this eye opening article from The Atlantic tells us something that many of us long suspected but dared not vocalize, namely, the best & the brightest American […]
Why is the Indian Middle-Class Suffering?
Consumption patterns show that India’s urban middle class is suffering. We believe that there are 3 reasons for this: (a) In offices & factories, technology is replacing humans in jobs entailing routine work; (b) The Indian economy is in the early stages of a cyclical economic downturn; and (c) Household balance sheets in India appear […]
Short read: 10 Investing Lessons from the 2024 Election
Investors tend to follow political developments particularly elections with great interest with the hope that they can align their portfolios to benefit from these developments. Implicit in this is an assumption that elections have a bearing on investment returns. The market’s rally since the elections reinforces that belief. But in this piece, Barry Ritholtz providing […]
Short read: Indian experts hail breakthrough in bid to save huge native bird
It is not just middle class Indians who are having problems finding a mate. The great Indian bustard is also having a problem. So much so that it is now a critically endangered species. However, good old Indian jugaad has now been deployed to shore up the bustards numbers. Cherylann Mollan writes: “Wildlife officials in […]
Short read: To marry or not to marry: What’s stopping young urban Indians from saying ‘I do’
The opening lines of this insightful piece from Rinku Ghosh has one of the central characters featured in the story saying, ““Marriage today has become a complex challenge. Everybody has their individual goals and pressures to deal with. And aligning them or accommodating each other without acrimony and regret is the toughest task. No one […]
Long read: Why I gave up trying to delete myself from the internet
Our increasingly digital lives have meant that the outside world knows more about us than we would like. It is not just about our individual preference for privacy, this exposes us to real risk of impersonations and online fraud. In this piece, the author, a journalist at The Economist shares her experience of trying to […]
Long read: At Mar-a-Lago, ‘Uncle’ Elon Musk Puts His Imprint on the Trump Transition
As voting patterns emerge, it appears that Donald Trump’s unexpected landslide win is more due to the American working class’ disappointment with the Democrats than a pro-Trump vote. Yet, markets have rallied reinforcing Trump’s pro-business stance. Indeed, the Trump campaign did benefit from the support of the business community, most notably Elon Musk, the world’s […]
Long read: ‘These are people in the prime of life’: The worrying puzzle behind the rise in early-onset cancer
David Cox’s story is about a subject that should be of interest to most of us: “There are rising cases of breast, colorectal and other cancers in people in their 20s, 30s and 40s… The investigation’s early findings, presented by an international team at the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) congress in Geneva in […]
Short read: Why it costs India so little to reach the Moon and Mars
When India successfully completed its historic launch of Chandrayaan-3 last year, there was a meme going around that its $75m cost was lower than the $100m budget of the sci-fi movie Gravity. India has punched way above its weight in terms of its space programme despite its developmental stage and relatively meagre resources compared to […]
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