A Google engineer mistook a powerful AI as sentient because of this human cognitive glitch
A fortnight ago, we woke upto the news that Google has created AI capable of human emotions. This article takes a very different view of the whole furore around ‘sentient AI’: “When you read a sentence like this one, your past experience tells you that it Is written by a thinking, feeling human. And, in this […]
China lured graduate jobseekers into digital espionage
As Cold War II rumbles on hardly a week passes without a new revelation regarding China’s tactics in this war. In previous editions of 3 longs & 3 shorts, we have highlighted the investigations by American and Canadian intelligence agencies of Chinese academics teaching in North America. This investigative piece in the FT highlights a […]
CCPs Increase Investments During a Crisis
Historically, once every five years, Marcellus’ CCP companies have faced a challenging external environment. In such instances, CCPs have ramped up capex and working capital investments (ex-financials as these parameters are not applicable to them). This has been followed by a sharp acceleration in the franchises’ growth rates in the subsequent 3-4 years. FY22 was […]
Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
Whilst food inflation globally is soaring for a variety of reasons, the war in Ukraine is clearly contributing its bit, given Ukraine and Russia both have a significant share of global grain production. Given the war is restricting the evacuation of grains from Ukraine to the rest of the world, millions of poor people at […]
How much money is needed for ideal life? Most are OK with £8m, study finds
Whilst an ideal life is subjective and hence the answer to the question in the title of this article might seem a bit elusive or at least personal, it is a question many of us ask of ourselves from a financial planning perspective. And often, as the article presupposes as its null hypothesis – everyone […]
Beyoncé is Black America’s great communicator
The FT’s pop music critic opines that “…among the ranks of opinionated entertainers, none is held to be as influential as Beyoncé. Leonardo DiCaprio’s warnings about climate change or Lady Gaga’s advocacy for LGBTQ+ communities never command the same degree of attention as Beyoncé’s interventions about racial politics and societal unrest. Kanye West attracts attention — […]
Quotes from Seth Klarman Interview
Seth Klarman is the CEO and portfolio manager at The Baupost Group, an American investment management firm. Klarman is known for his value oriented investment approach made most famous by his book – Margin of Safety. In a recent interview with Harvard Business School professor Das Narayandas, he shares his take on the markets and more […]
Bats and balls — but not baseball — win over Texas kids
Shah Rukh Khan is a smart businessman and given that he’s investing serious money in North American cricket, it is worth paying more attention to the cricket scene in USA. This interesting piece in the Washington Post explains how the growing size and affluence of the Indian community in Texas has made that state a […]
What’s the best way to help extremely poor people? After 20 years, the evidence is in
Whilst conventional wisdom has it that microfinance helps the poor, one of the world’s leading practitioners of this form of finance, Shameran Abed, the director of BRAC in Bangladesh, saw 30 years ago that “it was becoming clear that microloans weren’t reaching the poorest households. Nobody wanted to lend to them because who knew if they […]
Relentlessly Testing the Little Champs’ Fitness Levels
Most small caps that show early promise falter as they grow and eventually fade into oblivion. The most common reasons are dubious accounting/governance practices that come to fore as these companies are tracked closely by investors, capital misallocations (often a result of overconfidence or lethargy) and lack of delegation/institutionalisation which inhibits the franchise’s growth. At […]
India’s Moment After a Decade of Structural Reforms
Between 1870 to 1940, America became the world’s most industrialised economy. During this period, with the emergence of railroads, the telegraph, cars and roads, the American economy was ‘networked’. This joining up of America helped efficient, well capitalised companies with competitive advantages to consolidate entire industries. After a decade of pathbreaking structural reforms, India is […]
Three Different Routes to Compounding Heaven
Lenders are leveraged business and have a unique business model very different from other non-financial companies. This makes it difficult to compare metrics of lenders with other companies. In this newsletter we delve deeper into such aspects of reinvestment rate, book value compounding and return on equity of lenders. For instance, for most non-financial companies, […]
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