Why Finance is Hard to Decentralize
Over the past two months, the Indian central bank, the RBI conducted pilots around the digital Rupee or India’s CBDC (Central Bank issues Digital Currency) across both wholesale and retail market transactions. These have in-turn triggered debate around whether this can disintermediate the banking system. Whilst theoretically possible, the fact that the RBI chose banks […]
Has private equity avoided the asset-price crash?
The Economist follows up on a theme we have featured twice in 3L&3S this year (see here and here) – how unlike public equities which have been marked down by the market this year, private assets have been stable or atleast based on one report seem to have appreciated this year. “A huge gap between the valuations of […]
Enough longtermism — we need to think about now
Over the past twelve months, Stuart Kirk – former editor of the FT’s famous Lex column and former head of responsible investment at HSBC Asset Management – have become famous for calling out what he says is a racket in which vested interests are riding the ESG investing bandwagon and lining their pockets. In this […]
Jason Kilar on the Chaotic Streaming Wars—and How This Hollywood Story May End
Netflix, the global streaming giant has had a roller coaster ride in terms of its share price – after soaring 25x in the decade preceding the peak of the tech boom last year, it lost almost 70% by this summer. Whilst the fall in shares can be partly attributed to some generic reasons that affected […]
How Top Gun: Maverick shocked the world
In the 27th November edition of 3 Longs & 3 Shorts we had highlighted Y Combinator founder Paul Graham’s blog titled “Do things that don’t scale” – see http://paulgraham.com/ds.html . As luck would have it, a fortnight later we came across a perfect case study of an incredibly lucrative business which can’t be scaled (and it is lucrative […]
Rocketing to space: ISRO’s open infrastructure is giving wings to startups
Over the past decade the steps India has taken to methodically build a unique set of digital public assets is steadily making the country more efficient – see our blog https://marcellus.in/blogs/from-aadhaar-to-ondc-indias-methodical-build-of-digital-assets-creates-competitive-advantages/ In this context that the Indian Space Research Organisation, ISRO’s, remarkable decision to open up its knowledge, its IP and its platform to startups is very […]
MeritorQ: Strength Lies in Numbers
The operational efficiency of the quantitative approach we take in MeritorQ allows us to analyze and rank stocks over a large investment universe on a consistent set of metrics. Ranking over a large peer group of companies magnifiesthe power of statistical analysis and hence the reliability of the screening and selection steps. Another benefit of […]
Haters
Last week we featured a piece by Paul Graham, best known for the start-up incubator, Y Combinator. Last week’s piece was advice to founders on building sustainable competitive advantages whilst this one, albeit a bit dated is also advice to founders, on how to deal with ‘haters’ that inevitably come with success and in particular, fame. First, […]
From GE to FTX, beware the Icarus complex
A few weeks ago, we featured a podcast about the rise and fall of GE, the American conglomerate with a Morningstar analyst. This week’s Schumpeter column in the Economist features the recent book on the same subject – ‘Power Failure’ by William D Cohan, which seems to have the same message as the podcast – Jack Welch […]
Investor Howard Marks: ‘The short run is by far the least important thing’
Most of us in Marcellus know Howard Marks for his outstanding books and his remarkably well written investment memos. What we also know now thanks to this lively interview in the FT is: “He began writing the memos in 1990, initially sending them by post to Oaktree’s 50 or so clients. For the first 10 years, […]
The World Cup’s New High-Tech Ball Will Change Soccer Forever
The football world cup is not known as the greatest show on the planet for no reason. It is indeed the beautiful game and most watched sport globally. The tournament has taken off with much excitement what with Argentina, Germany and Belgium facing upset defeats, enough to drown the initial controversy around the event’s hosts. […]
J. Edgar Hoover, Public Enemy No. 1
As we watch strongmen in Russia and China propel their great countries towards ruin, it is worth remembering that even in established democracies, autocrats can flourish and cause immense damage. This article based on a new biography of J Edgar Hoover, the man who ran the FBI from 1924 up to his death in 1972, […]
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