Long read: Chip War’s Chris Miller on Putin, China, and The Future
In November 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT 3 which took the world by storm resulting in a race to build computing infrastructure (Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta are spending tens of billions) in turn making Nvidia, almost a monopoly in GPU chips, one of the world’s most valuable companies. Just a month before that was the […]
Long read: Ancient Indian medical system had an image crisis. A new name fixed it
Patrick Olivelle, Professor Emeritus of Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, has been for several decades a renowned guru on ancient India’s religious and social customs. In this intriguing article, Mr Olivelle explains how medical professionals had to reinvent themselves in ancient India. The challenge for medical professionals was that until about […]
Long read: Review of Sir John Kay’s “The Corporation in the 21st Century: Why (Almost) Everything We Are Told About Business Is Wrong”
Sir John Kay has been our business strategy guru for the entirety of our professional careers. Whilst he’s known to the wider world as an economist, John has also been a very successful investor across public & private markets and across financial & physical assets. For over three decades, he managed the endowment of St […]
Short Read: Weight-loss drugs ‘slow down the ageing process’, scientists suggest
The global pharmaceutical industry had to wait a while for its next blockbuster drug which came in the form of semaglutide, originally meant to treat diabetes but eventually found to be aiding weight loss. It is indeed turning out to be a wonder drug with new studies now showing anti-ageing benefits. Intuitively reducing weight should […]
Short Read: Twenty-five Years on, “Fight Club” Punches Harder than ever
Student protests have been powerful and influential through history, partly by the sheer energy and courage to change what’s perceived to be wrong with the world but also a more idealistic view of how the world should be. And through history books, music and movies have influenced young minds in the development of such an […]
Short Read: How British Abolition of Slavery led to India’s Indentured Labour System
In Holland, in the West Indies, in Fiji, in Malaysia and in Mauritius, we have met people of Indian descent whose ancestors left India around 150 years ago. Given that the rest of the world wasn’t exactly embracing Indian talent at that point of time, how did these Indians migrate such vast distances and build […]
Long Read: Beat your Bot: Building your Moat against AI
Plenty has been written about the looming threat of Artificial Intelligence (AI) replacing humans at many jobs. Here’s a perspective from someone who has already faced with the threat and has thought deeply about how to protect himself. Professor Aswath Damodaran, widely known for his work on valuations, thanks to his freely available books, blogs […]
Long Read: Indigenous, Affordable, How Robot-Assisted Surgeries are Finding Takers in Smaller Indian Cities
Whilst rural India is struggling, small town India is flourishing. Amongst other things, as affluent Indians abandon the public health infrastructure and migrate to well-managed private sector hospitals, robotic assisted surgeries (RAS) are all the rage in smaller Indian cities. Indeed when you get off the flight in these cities, the first advertisement that usually […]
Long Read: “I am Seething with Anger”: A Decade of Stagnation in Rural Wages
If you ask an Economics graduate “What will happen to real rural wages in a democratic country where real GDP growth is consistently north of 6% and where the rural economy suffers from endemic labour shortages?”, chances are that no Economics graduate will answer that “real rural wages will stagnate in such an economy”. And […]
MeritorQ: CAPE Fear
In this newsletter, we look at current market valuation levels implied by the cyclically adjusted price to earnings ratio (CAPE). Going by past history, our analysis suggests that at current CAPE levels, Indian investors should be more cautious on forward-looking market returns. Irrespective of market valuation, we believe MeritorQ’s low-risk approach of picking profitable, low-debt […]
Short read: The Book Bag That Binds Japanese Society
The Japanese are known for their customs followed religiously like unwritten rules not imposed by any authority but societal norms and peer pressure. “During the coronavirus pandemic, for example, the government never mandated masks or lockdowns, yet the majority of residents wore face coverings in public and refrained from going out to crowded venues. Japanese […]
Short read: Why do Australians Live so Long?
Thanks to progress in the medical field, life expectancy across the world is rising. But is this rise uniform across the world or are some societies doing better than others. Here’s a paper that got published earlier this month comparing English speaking countries on life expectancy. “THE AVERAGE Australian will live around two years longer […]
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