As Indian households financialise their wealth, one side-effect seems to be the pile-up in unclaimed assets (after the owner of the asset has passed away). As per Moneylife, India now has Rs 2 trillion ($25 bn) of such assets [that’s almost 0.7% of India’s GDP] and this number is growing at 15-20% per annum: “Generally, […]
In November 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT 3 which took the world by storm resulting in a race to build computing infrastructure (Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta are spending tens of billions) in turn making Nvidia, almost a monopoly in GPU chips, one of the world’s most valuable companies. Just a month before that was the […]
Patrick Olivelle, Professor Emeritus of Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, has been for several decades a renowned guru on ancient India’s religious and social customs. In this intriguing article, Mr Olivelle explains how medical professionals had to reinvent themselves in ancient India. The challenge for medical professionals was that until about […]
Sir John Kay has been our business strategy guru for the entirety of our professional careers. Whilst he’s known to the wider world as an economist, John has also been a very successful investor across public & private markets and across financial & physical assets. For over three decades, he managed the endowment of St […]
The global pharmaceutical industry had to wait a while for its next blockbuster drug which came in the form of semaglutide, originally meant to treat diabetes but eventually found to be aiding weight loss. It is indeed turning out to be a wonder drug with new studies now showing anti-ageing benefits. Intuitively reducing weight should […]
Student protests have been powerful and influential through history, partly by the sheer energy and courage to change what’s perceived to be wrong with the world but also a more idealistic view of how the world should be. And through history books, music and movies have influenced young minds in the development of such an […]
In Holland, in the West Indies, in Fiji, in Malaysia and in Mauritius, we have met people of Indian descent whose ancestors left India around 150 years ago. Given that the rest of the world wasn’t exactly embracing Indian talent at that point of time, how did these Indians migrate such vast distances and build […]
Plenty has been written about the looming threat of Artificial Intelligence (AI) replacing humans at many jobs. Here’s a perspective from someone who has already faced with the threat and has thought deeply about how to protect himself. Professor Aswath Damodaran, widely known for his work on valuations, thanks to his freely available books, blogs […]
Whilst rural India is struggling, small town India is flourishing. Amongst other things, as affluent Indians abandon the public health infrastructure and migrate to well-managed private sector hospitals, robotic assisted surgeries (RAS) are all the rage in smaller Indian cities. Indeed when you get off the flight in these cities, the first advertisement that usually […]
If you ask an Economics graduate “What will happen to real rural wages in a democratic country where real GDP growth is consistently north of 6% and where the rural economy suffers from endemic labour shortages?”, chances are that no Economics graduate will answer that “real rural wages will stagnate in such an economy”. And […]
In this newsletter, we look at current market valuation levels implied by the cyclically adjusted price to earnings ratio (CAPE). Going by past history, our analysis suggests that at current CAPE levels, Indian investors should be more cautious on forward-looking market returns. Irrespective of market valuation, we believe MeritorQ’s low-risk approach of picking profitable, low-debt […]
The Japanese are known for their customs followed religiously like unwritten rules not imposed by any authority but societal norms and peer pressure. “During the coronavirus pandemic, for example, the government never mandated masks or lockdowns, yet the majority of residents wore face coverings in public and refrained from going out to crowded venues. Japanese […]
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