The Netflix Hit “RRR” Is a Political Screed, an Action Bonanza, and an Exhilarating Musical
Having been under the colonial yoke themselves, the Americans have a less romantic view of the British Raj than the British. It is in that context that Richard Brody’s review of Rajamouli’s superhit movie ‘RRR’ becomes a riveting read – the review celebrates the movie’s in-your-face criticism of colonialism as much as it celebrates the […]
A Framework for Assessing Competitive Advantages in the Digital Era
Given the vibrancy of India’s startup ecosystem, it is interesting to see what sort of competitive advantages businesses of this sort can build. We use five parameters – (1) Barriers to Entry, (2) Product Complexity, (3) Customer Stickiness, (4) Bargaining Power & (5) Network Effects – to assess the strength of online businesses & apply […]
Making brainstorming better
When we are fazed with a problem demanding a creative solution, we often call for ‘brainstorming’ sessions to thrash it out. But many of us sometimes find these sessions ineffective at best, painful at worst. This piece in the Bartleby column identifies inherent conflicts in such exercises which require a balanced approach to make them […]
Rallies to the Bottom
Bear market rallies are important to understand for those who fancy their chances of catching the bottom or in general time the market. And no better than Nick Magguilli to use plenty of data to drive the point home. US markets were up c.7% in the week ending 27th May tempting many to call the bottom. […]
Jack Welch, The Man Who Broke Capitalism
The world of business is full of larger than life businessmen or CEOs who are credited with the entire success of the company. In some cases, it is well justified, especially in a company’s early stage of development where the idea, the passion and perseverance of one individual drives the company’s fortunes almost entirely. However, […]
Olivier Blanchard: ‘There’s a tendency for markets to focus on the present and extrapolate it forever’
With crude rallying back above $120, there seems to be no respite from the inflationary pressures affecting the global economy. Given this situation has resulted from both demand side (unprecedented stimulus – monetary and fiscal during the pandemic) and supply side factors (broken supply chains, war and Chinese lockdown), it isn’t particularly straightforward to assess […]
My investment lessons from 40 years in China
For those of us who have never worked in China or invested in that vast country, China remains for us a fascinating and somewhat forbidding nation. In this piece, Steve Watson, a portfolio manager at Capital, shares his experiences of travelling to and investing in China over the past 40 years. He begins by recounting […]
Still Top Gun? What Tom Cruise’s new movie tells us about American power
The producers of ‘Top Gun’ could not have timed the release of the movie ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ better. It was launched in a week in which Joe Biden was visiting Japan and talking about protecting Taiwan from China. The Chinese in turn were mouthing off at the ‘bloody & barbaric’ Americans. For those of who […]
CCP’s Capital Allocation is Shifting Towards Tech Capex
As technology adoption becomes ubiquitous, the competitive advantages of winning businesses will be determined by their quality of capital allocation across four distinct layers – Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP (backbone), operational optimization (muscles), data analytics (brain) and customer interface (face). While a traditional business begins its tech investment journey from the first layer (ERP) […]
How Nikhat Zareen punched her way to becoming a champion
A week after our men’s badminton team won the Thomas Cup, the world cup for team badminton, we have another world champion in Nikhat Zareen who won the flyweight title at the recent world boxing championships. Regular readers would note that we would jump at featuring against-the-odds kind of success stories. Nikhat’s is one such […]
What We Should Remember About Bear Markets
They say investing is more of a behavioural science than anything else. And no better time to understand this than a bear market when emotions can drive irrational decisions (not too different that that in a bull market except nobody cares then). This blog by a British asset allocator gives us some pertinent pointers on […]
Sorry, But for You, Oil Trades at $250 a Barrel
Fuel prices feed into inflation in many ways causing a ripple effect resulting in inflation getting entrenched. For instance, the raging food inflation has a significant component of fuel as a drive through transportation and fertiliser costs. The Indian government clearly recognises that and hence last week cut taxes on fuel to do its bit […]
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