Terry Smith: “The problem is most people don’t read the accounts”
When we were growing up as analysts in the early years of this century, we used to read and re-read Terry Smith’s “Accounting for Growth” (first published in 1992) so as to learn from the great man how to spot accounting fraud in well known companies. Terry then went on to build and then sell […]
Spotlighting Galaxy Surfactants Limited
This month we place the spotlight on Galaxy Surfactants Limited, the world’s leading producer of oleo-chemical based surfactants. Surfactants and other speciality chemicals manufactured by Galaxy impart critical functional properties, texture, and market-positioning attributes to the end products manufactured by the FMCG giants. This together with need for high quality & safety (as these are […]
Enticing cricket toss proposal could give each side of the coin equal weight
There is always an element of luck in everything we do. But in the field of sport sometimes the role of luck might seem a bit too unfair, especially when you are giving it your all. The recent T20 cricket world cup showed an outsized influence of the ‘toss’ – the decision to bat or […]
Charlie Penner, the Investor Reshaping Exxon Fro the Inside
At Marcellus, we often remind ourselves that the larger purpose of investing is beyond just generating returns or managing risk – it is about influencing, even in a small way, positive change in the world we live in. We believe in some ways it is our duty to try and engage in constructive dialogue with […]
Omicron SARS-CoV-2 variant: a new chapter in the COVID-19 pandemic
Whilst it is early days for us to have a definitive view on the new Covid variant – Omicron, we are all eager to know what the pandemic has in store for us. True to the social media driven information age we live, there’s plenty of hyperbole and propaganda from both sides of the debate. […]
Howard Marks: The Winds of Change
“When I see memos from Howard Marks in my mail they’re the first thing I open and read” is an oft cited quote from Warren Buffett to remind us of the wisdom that Marks has to offer. And yet Marks’ now legendary memos are less about predictions and forecasts as the humility that it is […]
Why Every Entrepreneur Should Study the Austrian School of Economics
One of the most frustrating things about studying Economics is that has no conception of entrepreneurship because in a competitive economy all available opportunities for supernormal profit have already been captured (or so say the Economics textbooks). Furthermore, as per classical economic theory, if any firm is generating a rate of return above its cost […]
Sunder Genomal, the man who brought ‘Jockey’ to India
At Marcellus, we have a large position in Page Industries, the Indian franchisee of Jockey undergarments. We have written about the company and its promoter Sunder Genomal several times including in our 2016 bestseller “The Unusual Billionaires”. As we have said before, the gradual demise of the Indian conglomerate has brought to the fore a […]
CCPs use more ‘S-curves’ to elongate their fundamental compounding
Value addition from every initiative undertaken by a company follows an ‘S-curve’ with three parts to it – the investment phase, the growth phase and the fade period. The fundamentals of the overall company are a consolidation of ‘S-curves’ of all initiatives. There are several limiting factors to every initiative such as addressable market size, […]
What if the Fed is Wrong?
The unprecedented amount of monetary and fiscal stimulus in the developed world has not only pulled the global economy of the Covid scare but on various measures triggered a strong and broad-based economic recovery to the extent inflation in the US has hit a 30yr high. This has in turn driven the need for tightening […]
Chief executives are weirder than ever
The role of the CEO has always been demanding. But with changing times, it has only become tougher, says this piece in The Economist, which delves into academic research on the qualities that organisations should look for when hiring a CEO. The article shows that the diverse set of qualities required make such an ‘ideal CEO’ […]
Why staring at screens is making your eyeballs elongate – and how to stop it
The emergence of smartphones had already increased the amount of time we spend staring at screens even before the pandemic. With remote work and online schooling, screen times have shot up even more. Clearly, this has implications for the health of our eyes. As the article educates us, it is not so much the light from […]
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