Portfolio Performance and Update on Fundamentals-November 2023
Consistent Compounders Portfolio (CCP) Companies in our Consistent Compounders Portfolio generated median PAT growth of 24% YoY in 2QFY24 and 27% YoY in 1HFY24. This acceleration in PAT growth is an outcome of both: a) accelerated market share gains and improved operating efficiencies as an outcome of capital allocation decisions taken over the last […]
Short read: The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language
The software which is helping compile this edition of the 3L&3S just turned 40. The ubiquitous Microsoft Word is the dominant word processing software globally. This article in the BBC looks at how this ubiquity with hundreds of millions if not over a billion users, might have influenced our use of language. The author shows […]
Short read: How AI will change investment, research and perhaps even your future portfolio
The author of this piece, Juan Perez, is “a former global head of research at Morgan Stanley and former group head of research, data and analytics at UBS.” Mr Perez begins with the piece with an analogy featuring Isaac Newton: “Sir Isaac Newton lost a fortune betting on the South Sea Co. Perhaps he did not take into […]
Short read: The Indian siblings taking the chess world by storm
The game of chess has been played for 1500 years. Therefore, it is fitting that the first country to give this game a family with multiple Grandmasters is the country where the game was born, India. As Susan Ninan explains in this article, “few have fit the chess prodigy descriptor as well as India’s Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa. […]
Long read: How mathematics built the modern world
It is said that the hierarchy of sciences goes like this: Physics > Chemistry > Biology > Psychology > Sociology. One wouldn’t be developed without the predecessor. But to understand Physics would be unimaginable without Math. In this fascinating essay, Professors Bo and Hannes Malmberg take us through the history of Mathematics and how it […]
Long read: Too much stuff: can we solve our addiction to consumerism?
In our last week’s edition of the 3L&3S, we featured Yvon Chouinard’s oped in the NYT about the need for a quality revolution to drive sustainability and deal with climate change. A reader responded with this long read in The Guardian – an excerpt from a new book “Stuff: Humanity’s Epic Journey from Naked Ape to Nonstop Shopper” by […]
Long read: The Most Dangerous Conflict No One Is Talking About
More than the Middle East or Russia or Taiwan, the most likely place for an epic punch-up is the South China Sea. That’s the main thrust of this long piece in The Atlantic with the author, Tim McLaughlin, casting China as the primary instigator. Mr McLaughlin begins by explaining why the odds are in favour […]
Kings of Capital Portfolio Newsletter: Quality lenders to benefit from RBI’s credit shakeout
To curb systemic risk posed by the sharp growth in unsecured credit and NBFC credit in the banking system, the RBI raised risk weights on both from 100% to 125%, effectively asking lenders to set aside more equity capital for these credit risks. This move is likely to have highest impact on business models of […]
From Konappana Agrahara to Electronic City: A Village as a Microcosm of India
Three decades ago, the fortunes of two tiny villages ~20 kms away from Bengaluru changed for the better. In 1992, Infosys set up its campus in these villages and triggered a transformation in what is now known as Electronic City. This monumental change created winners (the tech companies, their employees, landowners) and losers (landless farmers, […]
Short read: The High Stakes of Low Quality
Quality in essence underpins durability or sustainability whether it comes to investing or consumer products. However, falling attention spans and growing consumerism has driven people’s preferences away from durability towards short termism or use and throw behaviour. Yvon Chouinard, the legendary founder of the iconic clothing brand Patagonia, writes in this oped for the New […]
Short read: Charlie Munger – He didn’t merely teach us how to invest, he showed us how to think
Charlie Munger, the vice chairman and lesser known partner at Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathway, passed away earlier this week, just short of his 100th birthday. Investors who have aspired to follow on the footsteps of Berkshire have benefited from Munger’s nuggets of wisdom not just in investing but on life in general – much of it […]
Short read: Pieces aligned: Indian chess is on the cusp of an unprecedented revolution
Over the past decade, chess coaching academies have mushroomed in almost every suburban neighbourhood in peninsular India. Combine that with easy online access to the best chess players in the world and to a massive repository of chess knowledge and you have the recipe for an explosion of “young Indian chess players who have started to […]
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