How Supreme Court struck down a ‘sealed cover’ ban on a Malayalam news channel
Those of us who pretend to be in the know are, thankfully, reminded every week of how little we know. It took a landmark judgement last week from the Supreme Court to highlight one of the strangest practices in India’s courts – the ‘sealed cover’ i.e. a bunch of documents that during a court case […]
ChatGPT is about to revolutionize the economy. We need to decide what that looks like
There’s a joke going around: “Person A to Person B: Artificial Intelligence can’t take your job if your job never required any intelligence to begin with. Person B: I didn’t get that Person A: You’re safe” Irrespective of whether we like the brand of humour or not, it does seem contrary to popular perception that […]
What I learnt from three banking crises
The FT’s star columnist, Gillian Tett, is in fine form in this long essay in which she describes her learning from the three big banking crises she has seen in her career: Japan 1997-98, Lehman-GFC 2007-08 and the latest crisis in 2023 (SVB, First Republic, Credit Suisse, etc) where people sitting in the comfort of […]
Twenty Years of the Human Genome: Growing Older and Wiser
20 years ago the Human Genome Project was declared complete and the global media trumpeted the beginning of a new era of scientific discovery. In this blog Dr Peter Attia describes, both, why much of optimism about the HGP was misplaced and yet how the HGP is genuinely opening up pathways to new medical discoveries. […]
Real Luxury Goods Don’t Have Brand NamesReal Luxury Goods Don’t Have Brand Names
In our Global Compounders Portfolio, we own Hermes, a 180yr old French luxury brand known for its Birkin bags, a symbol of wealth and exclusivity due to its high price (starts at $10k going all the way upto $400k) and long waiting lists. Demand for luxury goods is not just steady but growing, especially amongst […]
Highlights from Charlie Munger’s conversation with Todds Combs (2022 Singleton Prize for CEO Excellence)
Charlie Munger is Warren Buffett’s long time investing partner and is known to possess an incredible mind. He will turn 100 on 1st Jan 2024, yet can shower nuggets of wisdom on investing, business and life in general as eloquently as ever. This is from a fireside chat a year ago with Todd Combs, someone who […]
Salim Durani played cricket king size, never allowed pressure to imprison him
No one who works in Marcellus was around to see India’s first ever triumph in the West Indies in 1971. India won the five test series 1-0 but in more ways than one this series was a landmark for Indian cricket. As Wikipedia explains, “The series can be deemed a landmark in Indian cricket in many […]
Michael Mauboussin — How Great Investors Make Decisions, Harnessing The Wisdom (vs. Madness) of Crowds, Lessons from Race Horses
The Tim Ferris Show is one of the most popular podcasts out there with a fairly diverse array of guests. But this episode will likely go down as our favourite. We have featured Michael Mauboussin’s essays here in the past. In this podcast, Mauboussin shows what sort of insight, a combination of voracious reading, deep […]
How China is winning the race for Africa’s lithium
As Indian investors and CEOs exult about the China+1 opportunity and the billions that we might one day rake in from this opportunity, China is busy gobbling up the one metal which matters nowadays, lithium. As this FT Big Read explains, “Last month, Africa’s first Chinese-owned lithium concentrate plant started up trial production at Arcadia, in […]
The Age of Average
Last week’s 3 longs & 3 shorts contained a piece by Janan Ganesh of the Financial Times in which he commented on the rise of elite sport and decline of intellectual discourse in daily life – see https://www.ft.com/content/8ecee960-ee87-4328-aa91-2002b63a43ec This week’s first long read from Alex Murrell attacks the same issue from another angle (an angle that […]
Optical Illusions in Equity Investing
Psychological biases tend to affect an investor’s decision making in subtle ways which are usually detrimental to long term investment returns. Several of these biases are better described as optical Illusions. Using the construct of the human brain as described by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman in his book ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’, we highlight a […]
Why Write?
As one of the long reads from this edition shows, AI capabilities have improved dramatically to the extent that a lot of our tasks can now be automated leaving us to do other things of value. If you want to understand how accessible these are, you should watch this video that Microsoft put out a couple of […]
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