Urban Indian Women Have More Money Than Men
For a decade or so now, it has been well understood that more women in India are increasingly getting educated (in terms of numbers) and doing it better (in terms of quality) than India’s men. Interestingly, new data shows that urban Indian women typically have more money in the bank than Indian men AND in India’s […]
Meet Ernie, China’s answer to ChatGPT
3L&3S has been featuring several pieces tracking the developments in AI space. This one is interesting as it involves China’s approach to AI. Challenges around censorship and limited access to semiconductors required for heavy duty data processing remain alongside the Chinese government’s ambition to emerge as a technological superpower. The context for the article is […]
Why the Kakrapar atomic power plant is a big deal
India’s response to climate change has been through its aggressive adoption of renewable energy since 2014 – here are some stats from the ministry of renewable energy’s portal: 42% of cumulative installed capacity from non-fossil fuel sources Renewable power generation up 1.5x Solar power installed capacity up 25x Wind power capacity doubled But what is […]
‘Friday is just a dead day’: how a summer perk became a year-round staple
It has been two years since the end of the pandemic ebbed away and yet in many parts of the world – notably, in tech-centric cities like Bangalore, San Francisco and Seattle – most workers are proactively reluctant to come back to office. This piece in the FT says that in most of the Western […]
Instinct Can Beat Analytical Thinking
Nobel prize winning psychologist and behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman and several others have demonstrated our shortcomings when it comes to rational decision making. Here’s another counter intuitive perspective on how instinct and intuition can beat elaborate analytical approaches to decision making. In a dated interview for the HBR, psychologist Gerd Giegerenzer talks about how “using heuristics, […]
The “Con” in Confidence
For several years now, Vivek Kaul has been writing excellent pieces for the Mint. However, even by his high standards this is an exceptionally insightful piece which is worth reading in full. Whilst Mr Kaul’s piece is ostensibly about conmen, in practical terms it is about four different types of selling techniques. The first technique […]
A Century & Counting
As longstanding Marcellus clients would know, the longevity of successful businesses is a subject which is of great importance for us because it is the stockmarket’s underestimation of this which allows us to identify to great companies which are being undervalued by the market. Outlook Business recently published a thought provoking article on this subject. […]
Learning from history: Discounting in Financial Services is a bad strategy
History shows that competing only on the basis of price either as a lender or as an insurer has inevitably led to heavy losses and in some cases to bankruptcy. In this newsletter, we discuss how PSU general insurers in their quest to gain market share, cut pricing in group health insurance for 5+ years […]
The Octopus Ascends: The Rise of Crazy Rich Indians
A new generation of around 200,000 super rich families (or 1 million individuals) are making their spending muscle felt. Their wealth is a result of: (a) the financialization of physical assets; (b) the networking of India which has resulted in affluence spreading to smaller towns & cities; (c) the rise of a cadre of […]
A Framework For Spotting Value Traps
In their attempt to buy stocks cheap, investors often fall into what are popularly called “Value Traps” – a seemingly good business at cheap valuations becomes cheaper and cheaper as the business destroys value. The folks at Eagle Point Capital provide us a framework to spot such traps and avoid them. They call it the […]
The economics of acting
Much like investing, acting looks but it isn’t easy. In fact, FT columnist, Soumaya Keynes says in this piece, “The problem with the profession is that so many people want to join it. London’s drama school Rada has 121 applicants per place…Early luck compounds. The top parts are only open to those with the top agents. […]
John Warnock, Inventor of the PDF, Dies at 82
John Warnock was the founder of Adobe. It is only upon reading John Warnock’s obituaries a fortnight ago that we realised how much our experience of using a computer owes to Mr Warnock’s multiple innovations. As Clay Risen explains, “Until Dr. Warnock and Adobe came along, desktop printing was an arduous, expensive and unsatisfying endeavor. Users […]
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