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 […]
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 […]
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