Five Things I Know about Investing
Forty years ago, Eugene Fama and Kenneth French revolutionised Finance by casting doubt on the CAPM theory: “They wrote a series of papers that cast doubt on the validity of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), which posits that a stock’s beta alone should explain its average return. These papers describe two factors above and beyond […]
Our View on the HDFC Mega-merger
In our May 2020 blog (click here to read), we explained how under Deepak Parekh’s leadership, the HDFC group has become India’s most successful financial services conglomerate by dominating virtually every segment that it has entered. With the HDFC group, capital – both human & financial – has consistently been allocated prudently. Seeding HDFC Bank […]
Mother pushes vegetable cart on Lucknow street, daughter Mumtaz stars in Junior hockey World Cup
Inspite of how the Indian state functions, the remaking of India lives on due to the aspirations of ordinary people and their desire to make a mark in the world. This extraordinary story in the Indian Express put a spring in our step: “ALONG A narrow, bustling street at Topkhana Bazar in Lucknow, Qaiser Jahan stood […]
This Year, 12 States Reduced Education Funding In Percentage Terms
Whilst people like us who work in the stockmarket are busy cheering the booming economy, some of India’s largest states are busy cutting their spend on essential items which have a massive impact on the development of the country. To quote Prafulla Satpute: “Even as most states increased or kept their education budgets similar in 2021-22, […]
ROC Investments Launches the World’s First ‘Return On Character®’ ETF
At Marcellus, we have spend most of the past decade writing books about and investing in clean, well-managed Indian companies with dominant franchises. Hence we were delighted and intrigued to hear that last month in the USA, a fund was launched which focuses on the character of the management team and invests in companies run […]
Putin Lives in Historic Analogies and Metaphors
As per his Wikipedia page Ivan Krastev is “is a political scientist, the chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, permanent fellow at the IWM (Institute of Human Sciences) in Vienna,[1] and 2013-14-17 Richard von Weizsäcker fellow at the Robert Bosch Stiftung in Berlin. He is a founding board member of the European Council […]
High-Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety. Here’s How to Create It
For most of us in Marcellus, this is our second go at managing a business. We got our first chance to run a business around 10-15 years ago when we were in our early thirties. At that point one of our earliest learnings was that “if we want to make groups of talented people collaborate […]
Have Chinese Spies Infiltrated American Campuses?
Last week we wrote a detailed piece of how the world is splitting down the middle as Cold War II kicks off – see https://marcellus.in/blogs/how-cold-war-ii-will-impact-your-wealth/ If you want to understand how the innards of the last forty years of co-operation between America and China are being ripped apart at a rapid rate you should read this […]
Spotlighting Tarsons Products
This month we place the spotlight on Tarsons Products Limited (Tarsons), a leading supplier of plastic labware products in India with a growing exports business (1/3rd of revenues). Tarsons enjoys industry leading operating margin (FY17-21 average EBITDA margin nearly 3x the second-best player’s) and significantly superior returns on capital employed vs peers (31% average over […]
Saudi Arabian comedy breaks new ground in portrayal of women
In super-conservative Saudi Arabia winds of change are blowing as “Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the day to day ruler, has over the past six years upended social and economic norms, as he tries to develop new industries and create jobs for his youthful population.” At the vanguard of this change is a hit comedy series […]
Mistakes, Lessons, and Strengthening of our Research Processes
Marcellus’ fund managers and research analysts continuously evaluate their decision-making to identify mistakes made and hence lessons learnt to help improve the quality of our investment decisions in future. In 2019 and 2020 we lacked granularity in our assessment of capital allocation decisions made by companies in our coverage universe. This resulted in our decision-making […]
A specialty coffee wave is brewing in India
Since we usually compile 3 Longs & 3 Shorts over the weekend whilst drinking large amounts of filter coffee purchased online, it is but appropriate that we should acknowledge the booming demand for specialty coffees in India. From Marcellus’ staff to the top IPL cricketers – we are all lovers of specialty coffees now. Andrew […]
For more content on our strategy, visit the archives GO TO ARCHIVES