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 […]
Moats Are Not That Hard To Calculate
In a recent interview Prof Bruce Greenwald of Columbia University (whose book “Competition Demystified” is something of a bible in Marcellus) said: “…Buffett’s word for this is moats, moats and franchises are identical, and it turns out moats are not that hard to calculate. I think one of the things Buffett has been coy about is […]
From gaon to Golf Links — Modern India is still under the spell of black magic
By all conventional measures India’s formal economy is booming (thanks to 32 mn jobs created in the past 3 years, a healthy stockmarket, abundant liquidity in the banking system, etc). This prosperity combined with the mental hammering that Covid-19 handed out has made India a booming market for tantrics. Before we delve into this boom, […]
The man known as ‘Putin’s brain’ envisions the splitting of Europe — and the fall of China
Vladimir Putin’s recent ramblings during his long televised speeches have allowed Putin watchers to figure out who his ideological gurus are. David Von Drehle says in this piece that the analysis behind Putin’s speeches are coming straight from “a fascist prophet of maximal Russian empire named Aleksandr Dugin.” Whilst you & I might not have heard […]
Review of Amartya Sen’s “Home in the World”
Those of us who grew up in India in the 1980s and 90s used be stunned by the quality of students that the schools of Kolkata would produce in that era. Our peers from Kolkata would read not just Tagore but also Kant & Shakespeare, not just Newton but also Einstein & Fermi. They would […]
How Cold War II Will Impact Your Wealth
Given the likelihood of elevated inflation as Cold War II commences, the worst possible thing that investors can do is seek the safety of fixed deposits, Government bonds, corporate bonds and other fixed income investments – inflation will radically erode the real value of such investments. The most sensible method to deal with a scenario […]
40 years of tapes, 30,000 DVDs, one cricket superfan: The Rob Moody aka robelinda2 story
If you are a cricket geek – like many of us in Marcellus are – you will often wake up on Sunday morning asking questions like “how good was Sachin’s century in the first innings of the 1993 Chennai test against England?”. If you do ask questions such as these only one man can readily […]
Path to US via YouTube, Insta— How Indian influencers are fuelling ‘New American Dream’
From the 1960s through to the turn of the century, the sons & daughters of well-educated middle class Indians made a dash for America because their parents held down respectable but poorly paid jobs in India and the next gen wanted to live a better life in the USA. Over the last decade, the progeny […]
How to prepare for a recession
It is commonplace these days for so called “investment experts” to assert that we are heading towards trouble after all as, bestselling author of “A Wealth of Common Sense”, Ben Carlson says, “There seems to be a growing consensus among smart people I follow right now: Inflation was already high and is only going to get […]
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