Even If You Knew The Future
Over the past decade Ian Cassell has become a celebrity microcap investor not least because of his superb “Intelligent Fanatics” series of books on great entrepreneurs and CEOs. In this blog, he explains the uselessness of macro forecasting from the perspective of an equity investor. In specific, he helps you understand how even if you […]
How social media killed the protest
FT columnist Robert Shrimsley points out that the rise of social media, rather than creating a virtual commune where contesting ideas can be debated, has undermined the quality of political activism because “For a certain kind of activist, politics has been reduced to pure performance”. Mr Shrimsley notes that at a recent public event in England […]
The Baghdad job: who was behind history’s biggest bank heist?
This long read has the potential to be made into a movie thriller. The content of the article – $2.5bn siphoned off a bank account meant to hold tax deposits of oil companies in Iraq, is in itself a matter of intrigue. But the author, Nicolas Pelham, goes one up with his story-telling that the […]
A conversation with Renaissance Technologies CEO Peter Brown
Renaissance Technologies’ Medallion fund, a hedge fund that deploys systematic trading using mathematical models, is known to have the best investing track record in history. In 2019, Gregory Zuckerman’s book titled “The Man Who Solved the Market” about Jim Simons, the legendary founder of RenTech, said this about the fund’s record: “Since 1988, his flagship Medallion […]
Cricket in Kashmir has always had a troubled pitch. Now women are helping change the game
As you might have noticed, we have been writing recently about the stunning new data highlighting the economic ascendancy of Indian women (see, for example, our blog which highlights that urban Indian women have more money than men: Urban Indian Women Have More Money Than Men – Marcellus). These positive changes for women are now increasingly […]
Portfolio Performance and Update on Fundamentals August
Consistent Compounders Portfolio (CCP) Marcellus’ Consistent Compounders Portfolio companies reported, on a weighted average basis, 20% YoY growth in profit after tax for both 1QFY24 (over 1QFY23) as well as for FY23 (over FY22). Financials sector companies in CCP (three lenders and 2 insurance companies) reported healthy topline as well as bottomline growth, reflective of […]
Your life should be on an accelerated learning curve
Often compounding is associated with wealth. But compounding applies to knowledge or learning, resulting in what Adam Singer refers to in this blog as the accelerated learning curve which is exponential and not linear. He builds on the premise that real insight often is a result of connecting the dots or what he refers to […]
China’s economic woes, explained
Like the previous short read about China’s development of indigenous semiconductor technology alongside a few other commentators who reckon things aren’t as bad on the ground in China might suggest the China’s economic collapse narrative is exaggerated by western propaganda. Having said that, data reported by Chinese authorities themselves is worrying. Indeed, they even stopped […]
Chips, Silk and Paper: You can’t keep secrets forever
It has become fashionable to argue these dayThis s that America can thwart China’s rise to ‘great power’ status by using an embargo on the export of hi-tech equipment to China. opinion piece in Bloomberg says that such a point of view is not based on fact. Firstly, for many thousands of years, the Chinese have […]
Masters of the Bubbleverse Secretive hedge fund Tiger Global changed the rules on tech investing. Then it all went bad.
Julian Robertson, the legendary investor who ran the hedge fund Tiger Management ended his career as he lost money shorting the dot com mania only to give up just before the bubble burst. However, several of his proteges set up their own hedge funds and came to be known as Tiger cubs. The most famous […]
Is There an Alternative to Air Conditioning?
As many of us who have spent our lives sitting inside offices know, “air conditioners powered by coal, oil or gas energy simultaneously increase emissions of greenhouse gases that heat the planet. Often installed on building facades, air-conditioning units also contribute to warming cities through the release of waste heat.” Gero Rueter, the author of this […]
No other investor has a life story quite as unbelievable as Li Lu
Whilst Li Lu is not as well known as his good friend, Charlie Munger, his investing track record is even better. Several articles on the net say that he has compounded at 30% per annum over 25 years – see https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/how-super-investor-li-lu-achieved-a-30-annual-return-for-25-years-4029b6697742 The focus of this entertaining long essay by Eleanor Olcott is Mr Lu’s incredibly interesting […]
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