We call it anda bhurji’: How the Indian subcontinent discovered Persian khagina and made it its own
Whilst the team at Marcellus hails from various parts of India and obviously has representatives from all of India’s great religious faiths, we are united by our love for good food & drink. Analysis of food in Marcellus comes second only to analysis of stocks. Preparations for any celebration are preceded by elaborate discussions on […]
Dhoni’s last-ball four, Miandad’s six and the stillness of their minds
Those of us who grew up in the 1980s hated Javed Miandad for traumatising us with insanely well calculated knocks in critical encounters with India. At the same time, even as schoolkids we could see why we needed to grow up to be like him – calm under pressure, calculating the odds all the time, […]
Von der Leyen seeks to deepen military and tech ties with India visit
As we explained in our piece three weeks ago, China & Russia’s menacing attitude towards democratic nations, is pushing India and the developed democracies to embrace each other more wholeheartedly. A month ago India signed its first trade deal with a developed country, Australia. Next up seems to be the UAE (although it would be […]
CSIS warns Canadian universities to be on alert for international espionage
Three weeks ago we wrote a piece on how the onset of Cold War II will reshape the world and give India an opportunity to ramp up its export economy – see see https://marcellus.in/blogs/how-cold-war-ii-will-impact-your-wealth/ We now share with you two pieces – this one and the next one – on different ways in which the world […]
Where the Fed went wrong on inflation
Until Lehman Brothers blew up it was fashionable to say that independent central banks are somehow better than central banks which are accountable to the elected government of the day. The dismal performance of financial markets the world over after Lehman went down showed that it really makes no difference whether the central bank is […]
Conviction, Confidence, and Courage – An Allegory
This is an outstanding paper written by two analysts at S&P Global – Anu Ganti & Craig Lazarra. Although the paper is based on data from the US stockmarket, it is an extended case study of four well known US stocks whose products almost all of us use (or have used at some point). We […]
India’s Capex Moves From Stability to Growth
India’s capex has been stable at around 30-35% of GDP for much of the past decade. Tech investments are an increasingly large portion of India’s capex but are not being picked-up by the official data. Whilst Government data suggests that India’s capex stands at 30% of GDP, if we adjust for technology investments in the […]
The Cashflow Compounding Contest: Rising Giants vs Metals Companies
Revenue growth is an important driver of Free Cashflow (FCF) growth. However, mere top-line growth usually doesn’t bring about non-linear FCF growth (hence the sub-par performance of commodity stocks on a cross-cycle basis). In this month’s newsletter, we deep dive into how the Rising Giants portfolio companies drive healthy FCF compounding through market share gains, […]
An undebatable political decision’: Why China refuses to end its harsh lockdowns
Exactly a year ago the world’s media was falling over itself to cover the ravaging of India by the second Covid wave. Even as many of us lost loved ones in Apr-June 2021, we could not but help feel disappointed by how the global media sought to portray India as a singularly messed up democracy. […]
There are good reasons why Elon wants Twitter
Twenty years ago mega rich people who had risen to the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs would buy a newspaper or two to satiate their need to control what the world thought in general and, more specifically, what the world thought of them. With the power of conventional media on the wane, Shirin Ghaffary […]
Nobody sells their child’ — Story of MDH, an original Indian ‘start-up’ that won’t go to HUL
At Marcellus we have written books on and built a business around the consolidation of various sectors of the Indian economy around 1 or 2 well-managed highly efficient companies who steadily crush their competitors and make a lot of money for their shareholders. For several years now, we have been looking at the spices industry […]
You have to do things perfectly . . . but it’s so secret’ — how to build an oligarch’s yacht
There was a time when the rich purchased private jets. However, such has been the explosion in prosperity over the past 20 years that the truly rich now have to have a yacht or two to show-off and relax in. Whilst yacht’s that are 40 metres or so are the domain of the mega rich, […]
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