Why economists are flocking to Silicon Valley
Whilst financial markets continue to chase macroeconomics for that elusive insight, the world of business still finds value in microeconomics. The latest to hop on the bandwagon is tech giants who have hitherto thrived on electronics, computer science and software engineers. The emergence of data science in new age technologies such as artificial intelligence and […]
Crazy rich relocations: Singapore becomes a haven for Chinese elite
In the wake of Jack Ma’s very public defenestration and with Chinese authorities talking of “common prosperity” and making no secret of their desire to cut down to size other articulate billionaires, unsurprisingly the Chinese elite is taking flight. Had the Chinese economy been booming perhaps these billionaires might have hung around but with a […]
Liquid assets: how the business of bottled water went mad
The new season of History 101, a documentary series on Netflix with 20min episodes on the evolutions of various things such as GPS, MP3, IVF, etc featured the history of bottled water. The Guardian’s Long reads archives promptly threw up this piece from 2016 on the same subject. Both of them talk about the fascinating […]
Business Breakdown of Rolex
Business Breakdowns are a series of podcasts which dive deep into very interesting businesses such as McKinsey, LVMH, Atlas Copco, Union Pacific, etc. We find these podcasts very useful because they help us understand & appreciate competitive advantages that we had never thought of. The featured expert in the podcast tends to be someone who […]
Meet Quick Style, that group of Norwegian boys who dance on Hindi songs and create moments that are priceless and special
We said in our blog last week that more than GDP growth, the measure of a country’ rise tends to softer factors like success in a range of sports which are NOT associated with making lots of money – see https://marcellus.in/blogs/sporting-success-captures-indias-rise-better-than-gdp-growth/. In the same vein, we take note of the meteoric rise of Quick Style, a […]
The Irrelevance of Short-Term Investment Performance
Short term (less than 12 months) performance of an equity portfolio is significantly affected by noise. The tools that can help deliver consistent short-term outperformance over benchmark indices usually bring with them the risk of compromising long term (3 years or longer) absolute returns. For instance, Berkshire Hathaway’s monthly performance has exceeded that of S&P500 […]
The Default Tech Settings You Should Turn Off Right Away
The fall in technology stock prices this year notwithstanding, tech companies such as the so called FAANGS have changed our lives for the better in many ways bringing convenience in terms of access to goods and services and the resulting productivity gains. However, a lot of their ability to deliver more relevant content and services […]
China’s Growth Sacrifice
Whilst some of us might view the western media’s take on the Chinese economic implosion as an exaggeration, our meetings with people close to the coal face on our recent trip to the Far East suggested otherwise. Things seem to be unravelling thick and fast driven by factors – economic, financial and political which we […]
A post-dollar world is coming
The recent dollar rally amidst the US experiencing high inflation has been perplexing market participants with the only explanation being the dollar’s safe haven status. As Ruchir Sharma argues in this article, some of this is a result of investors taking risk off the table given the current market volatility and parking themselves in cash […]
War and Industrial Policy
Zoltan Pozsar, a strategist at Credit Suisse is soon becoming one of the most followed albeit controversial voices on the emerging global geopolitical scene. Pozsar’s recent pieces on the future of the dollar-based global financial order is known for its big bold calls with fairly in-depth analysis and brilliantly written narratives. His most recent piece […]
How Mondragon Became the World’s Largest Co-Op
By any conventional yardstick, Mondragon is a colossal conglomerate: Mondragon’s “…collection of co-ops employs around eighty thousand people, and seventy-six per cent of those who work in manufacturing co-ops are owners. One makes bicycles at an industrial scale; others make elevators or produce huge industrial machines used in the production of jet engines, rockets, and wind […]
Capital Group: the slow-moving giant in dangerous waters
Four years ago when we created Marcellus’ business plan, Charles Ellis’ superb book on the Capital Group, ‘Capital: The Story of Long-Term Investment Excellence’, was an invaluable resource for us. As the only global fund management house which has truly managed to hold its own in an era characterised by the rise of index funds, Capital’s […]
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