Marcellus Insights
Why long term diversification is the only free lunch in investing
A ₹1 lakh investment in the Nifty in November 1995 would be worth roughly ₹36 lakh today, assuming dividends were reinvested. However, 2/3rds of that ₹36 lakh has come in the last 10 years (with the first two decades feeling slow, boring and punctuated by horrific years like 2008). That’s why long-term compounding is easy […]
Short read: The Unbearable Anxiety Of Being Just An Ordinary Human
There was a time when doing honest work, raising a family well and leaving one’s children slightly better off was considered a successful life. Today, being exceptional has shifted from an aspiration to an obligation. Children must excel at everything, professionals must build personal brands, entrepreneurs must create unicorns, and even hobbies are expected to […]
Short read: Here are five lessons for India from China’s successful higher education strategy
Following the events of last week at Jantar Mantar, India has got a new task force to fix its examination system. But what should the fix look like? Renowned economist, Ajit Ranade shares some lessons from the Chinese experience. “In large, unequal societies, the competitive public examination is a ticket to a better life. It […]
Short read: A Brief History of the Internet’s Favorite Scam
Everyone with an email address has met the Nigerian prince who has written to you asking for help in moving billions of his family’s assets outside the country. At a time when online frauds, whether “digital arrests” or fake KYC calls are all around, we thought it worth asking where the OG of cons actually […]
Long read: China Is Sabotaging the World That Enables Its Rise
Ray Dalio, a successful macro hedge fund manager, recently followed up his ‘Changing World Order’ thesis (also a book) where China challenges the US as the new world power, with this blog on the ‘Tribute system’. The authors of this piece in the Foreign Affairs begin with the idea: “Following the back-to-back state visits to […]
Long read: Lego Strikes Back Against Screens
We suspect every parent reading this is fighting the same quiet war: keeping a child’s eyes on something — anything — other than a glowing screen. It is a battle waged in living rooms from New Delhi to New York, and one that governments are increasingly trying to legislate. Hence, we were delighted to read […]
Long read: Review of Rana Dasgupta’s blockbuster, “After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order”
At Marcellus, we are suckers for well-researched ‘Big History’ books like Yuval Noah Harari’s “Sapiens” or Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs & Steel”. Rana Dasgupta’s brilliantly researched “After Nations” belongs to this very select set of books which make you see the world with a new pair of glasses. For decades, the nation-state has been thought […]
RBI’s FSR Continues to Sound Alarm Bells
Our bestselling book, Breakpoint, shows that India’s middle class is buckling under a debt load that has no equal in any other large economy — a case we built in no small part using the RBI’s own Financial Stability Reports (FSRs). The RBI’s latest FSR, released in June 2026, keeps ringing the same alarm bells, […]
Isaac Newton and the Madness of Men
Marcellus’ Global Compounders Portfolio (GCP) strategically invests in ~40 deeply moated global companies aligned with megatrends, with an aim to provide steady earnings and shareholder wealth compounding. Over the last few years, we’ve seen the world get increasingly intoxicated with the AI narrative. While we certainly see long-term merit in this technology and what it […]
Short read: Reading a 3,000-Year-Old Poem to a 3-Year-Old Boy
Last weekend, several of us braved the brutal Mumbai rains and the even more brutal Mumbai traffic to catch Christopher Nolan’s new movie ‘The Odyssey’. As rare as going to the movies has become, this was an Odyssey in itself. But the director’s track record makes it all worthwhile. This one though might be Nolan’s […]
Short read: ISRO is losing scientists to private space sector. How NASA solved this problem 40 years ago
Last weekend, Skyroot, an Indian space tech startup, successfully launched its first rocket Vikrant-1, making India only the third country to have private sector orbital launch capabilities. Remarkable achievement by the firm founded in 2018 by former scientists at India’s public sector space venture, ISRO. Whilst ISRO losing scientists to private sector isn’t knew, given […]
Short read: Forbidden fruit
There are few things that unite us as much as our love for mangoes does. So, this piece is likely to make you squirm as we learn from The Economist that the Japanese will no longer be buying Indian mangoes: “It has banned fresh mango imports from India, after the world’s biggest producer failed its […]
For more content on our strategy, visit the archives GO TO ARCHIVES