The Never Ending Generosity of the Public Sector
In this newsletter, we discuss the consolidation which is taking place across the Financial Services sector in India. Indian public sector banks (PSBs) are plagued by conflict of interest wherein the largest shareholder wants to run the banks for benefit of the public at large, mostly at the expense of minority shareholder. Historically this has […]
Covid learning loss has been a global disaster
Many of us agonised about how long authorities took to reopen schools and get our kids back on the path to learning. Whilst we knew that prolonged closures would have a lasting damaging effect on our kids’ futures, this article in The Economist cites new studies by World Bank and Mckinsey that attempt to show […]
Crispr for the Masses Gets a Little Closer to Reality
Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2020 for her contribution to the path breaking gene-editing technology CRISPR. The development of the technology has been beautifully captured in Walter Isaacson’s book – The Code Breaker. While gene-editing has raised prospects of curing rare diseases, a new development bodes well for potentially curing diseases which […]
The race to reclaim the dark
One of the great joys of travelling to far flung islands like, say, Havelock Island in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands is that with minimal light pollution in such places, you can see the midnight sky studded with thousands of stars. In several parts of the world, people are taking active measures that they too […]
Twitter Still Wants Musk’s Money
It is never a boring day in a world where the wealthiest man is Elon Musk. In early May, we featured a piece from Steven Pearlstein, where he reckoned that he wouldn’t be surprised if Musk eventually walks away from his somewhat hostile Twitter bid. Indeed, earlier this month, Musk withdrew his bid citing Twitter’s disclosure failures […]
Jagadish Chandra Bose: The first complete biography investigates his life as well as his science
Jagadish Chandra Bose was the first Indian scientist to make pathbreaking discoveries in a variety of fields. The American Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers regards him as one of the fathers of radio science. Bose did most of his research more than a century ago and “Bose’s Galena detector was the first semiconductor device and […]
The surprising revival of eastern Germany
As Xi Jinping draws the Bamboo Curtain to gradually isolate China from the world at large, it is but natural that foreign investment which would have once gone to China now migrates elsewhere. Whilst some of these investments will go to the other Emerging Markets, so singular was China’s rise in high tech manufacturing that […]
Rising Giants: Focus on the Signal, Ignore the Noise
In this month’s newsletter we focus on the portfolio stocks that have witnessed significant drawdowns (>20%) since inception. For Dr Lal Pathlabs, we emphasise how turnaround time, quality and accuracy of reports are more important drivers of competitive advantage than pricing. Aavas’ asset-liability matching gives us confidence regarding the resilience of its spreads in a […]
Mars Inc gets the purpose v profit balance right
At Marcellus, we believe in the role of business going beyond just the motive for profits and hence have featured articles on the subject in 3L&3S often. Most recently, we featured the iconic ice cream maker Ben and Jerry’s conscious capitalism. For those of us with a sweet tooth, we feature another company which measures up […]
In Defense of Dollar Cost Averaging
We are often faced with the perennial question of when to invest from clients – in bull markets and bear markets alike. Alas, given the difficulty (or impossibility?) and also the futility of timing the market, especially for those with long investment horizons, there is never an easy answer. The Indian mutual fund industry has […]
Padma nationalism
In an era characterised by vacuous nationalism, it is refreshing to come across a landmark announcement by a small country which is on the rise and on the make. Bangladesh’s inauguration of its longest bridge is one such landmark announcement made that much more memorable by the fact that the bridge also helps Marcellus staff […]
Risk Capital and Markets: A Temporary Retreat or Long Term Pull Back
The past ten months have seen record outflows of c. $40bn from foreign investors (FIIs) in the Indian public equity markets thanks to interest rate hikes by central banks globally. This linkage between interest rates and capital flows into and out of risk assets such as equities is important to understand future expected returns. In […]
For more content on our strategy, visit the archives GO TO ARCHIVES