Why Toyota Spent Years Treating Electric Cars Like the Enemy
At every other Research meeting in Marcellus, the late Clayton Christensen and his theory of the “Innovator’s Dilemma” is evoked. Christensen described “how large incumbent companies lose market share by listening to their customers and providing what appears to be the highest-value products, but new companies that serve low-value customers with poorly developed technology can […]
The Real ‘Dangal’, starring Vinesh
Last year we wrote about the massive changes taking place in the lives of Indian women as they steadily pull ahead of their male counterparts at every level of the education ladder and also emerge as highly effective entrepreneurs in the digital era – see https://marcellus.in/blogs/educated-employed-and-empowered-the-rise-of-indian-women/. The rise of Indian women is a story which […]
Boring Companies Compound Profits At 20% p.a.
Investors who’ve studied Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch know that so-called “boring” stocks can turn out to be great investments in the long run. In India, a few lenders have been able to perform consistently across cycles. However, this also makes them prey to cycles where share prices don’t tend to follow fundamentals as investors […]
Women work harder than men – our anthropological study reveals why
Having more women in the workplace not just adds to diversity and improves idea generation, they also work harder. We knew that anecdotally but here’s a study by a PhD student and her Professor that shows tangible evidence that women indeed work harder than men. The study also attempts to find evolutionary reasons for why […]
How thinking hard makes the brain tired
Much like physical fatigue, our minds also get tired after a bout of intensive work that involves mental application. However, what causes mental fatigue wasn’t particularly well understood. As this article says, the earlier theories suggesting lack of energy were proven wrong as cognitive work consumes very few calories. New research points to accumulation of […]
Just How Common Is Corporate Fraud?
The end of every bull market brings with it revelations of corporate fraud (think Enron, Maddoff, Satyam and now the crypto blowups). Our forensic accounting research on the Indian stockmarket has suggested that over the past decade a third or so of listed Indian companies have done naughty things with their accounts – see https://marcellus.in/newsletter/little-champs/the-importance-of-accounting-quality/ In […]
Meet the extraordinary intellectual Tho Pa, who awakened Tamils to the richness of their culture
When we travel across India to meet our investee companies and our clients, we can see massive social change caused by 40 years of rising literacy and rising per capita income. Such a combination is an ideal recipe for an explosion in demand for local stories written in the vernacular about the history of that […]
How Much Netflix Can the World Absorb?
Some of us are old enough to remember that once upon a time, we in India used to watch local Indian football matches on TV and on the ground. Then the 1986 football was broadcast live from Mexico. After that, audiences for Indian football matches dwindled rapidly – even if you were a diehard East […]
The Cheaper They Get, The More We Buy
The long-term valuation of a company is determined by the growth and longevity of its free cash flows (FCF). Its share price, on the other hand, is heavily influenced by near term earnings/events. This creates a disconnect between the intrinsic value of the company and its share price. This disconnect has been stark for the […]
The science of why you have great ideas in the shower
Turns out it wasn’t a coincidence that Archimedes was in the bathtub when he figured buoyancy. People do get epiphanies in the shower for a reason. This piece in the National Geographic explains the science behind it. Not just showers, whatever activity lets our mind wander freely in a pleasant state of mind sets the […]
China: the rise of gen Z will have massive consequences for business and politics
The implications of the changing geopolitical situation from a macroeconomic perspective are somewhat well appreciated – deglobalisation or rearranging of supply chains, its inflationary effects and interest rates. However, this article in The Conversation suggests there are implications from a microeconomic perspective as well, such as changing consumer preferences and hence how businesses should think […]
Asset managers, please spare us your polyexcuses
Over the past year, Stuart Kirk, a former head of responsible investment at HSBC Asset Management, has made a name for himself by calling out pretentious shibboleths such as ESG. In this piece he takes as fund managers’ expertise in coming up with excuses to justify their poor performance: “This year, with many down a quarter, […]
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