The Real Enemy
Often investment decisions are made purely on the basis of returns ignoring two other equally if not more important aspects – risk and time horizon. Risk, unfortunately is not easy to understand. Our industry including us have misrepresented risk by equating with volatility which as Christine Benz articulates in this Morning Star article, is a […]
The flawed math behind Elon Musk’s Twitter deal
There has been a lot of hue and cry about the prospects of the wealthiest person in the world owning the world’s ‘digital townsquare’ and thereby wielding significant power through influence of public opinion. Whilst the real power of Twitter as a platform of influence is debatable given the relatively small user base (compared to […]
Hong Kong, my vanishing city
Several of us in Marcellus were stockbrokers before we could afford to become investors. As stockbrokers, Hong Kong was one of our favourite cities to visit, ranking alongside vibrant financial centres as New York and London and offering people like us not just the chance to make money but also to enjoy delicious Chinese food, […]
Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid
Jonathan Haidt is the Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University Stern School of Business. “His main areas of study are the psychology of morality and moral emotions. Haidt’s main scientific contributions come from the psychological field of moral foundations theory, which attempts to explain the evolutionary origins of human moral reasoning on the basis […]
Studying the ‘Holiday Schedule’ of Consistent Compounders
Share prices of CCPs often go on a ‘holiday’ for 12-24 months, delivering weak or no returns. These ‘holiday’ periods of share price are typically uncorrelated with fundamentals because during such periods these companies continue implementing initiatives to enhance the sustainability of their competitive advantages. Once the ‘holiday’ period ends, share prices of CCPs deliver […]
We call it anda bhurji’: How the Indian subcontinent discovered Persian khagina and made it its own
Whilst the team at Marcellus hails from various parts of India and obviously has representatives from all of India’s great religious faiths, we are united by our love for good food & drink. Analysis of food in Marcellus comes second only to analysis of stocks. Preparations for any celebration are preceded by elaborate discussions on […]
Dhoni’s last-ball four, Miandad’s six and the stillness of their minds
Those of us who grew up in the 1980s hated Javed Miandad for traumatising us with insanely well calculated knocks in critical encounters with India. At the same time, even as schoolkids we could see why we needed to grow up to be like him – calm under pressure, calculating the odds all the time, […]
Von der Leyen seeks to deepen military and tech ties with India visit
As we explained in our piece three weeks ago, China & Russia’s menacing attitude towards democratic nations, is pushing India and the developed democracies to embrace each other more wholeheartedly. A month ago India signed its first trade deal with a developed country, Australia. Next up seems to be the UAE (although it would be […]
CSIS warns Canadian universities to be on alert for international espionage
Three weeks ago we wrote a piece on how the onset of Cold War II will reshape the world and give India an opportunity to ramp up its export economy – see see https://marcellus.in/blogs/how-cold-war-ii-will-impact-your-wealth/ We now share with you two pieces – this one and the next one – on different ways in which the world […]
Where the Fed went wrong on inflation
Until Lehman Brothers blew up it was fashionable to say that independent central banks are somehow better than central banks which are accountable to the elected government of the day. The dismal performance of financial markets the world over after Lehman went down showed that it really makes no difference whether the central bank is […]
Conviction, Confidence, and Courage – An Allegory
This is an outstanding paper written by two analysts at S&P Global – Anu Ganti & Craig Lazarra. Although the paper is based on data from the US stockmarket, it is an extended case study of four well known US stocks whose products almost all of us use (or have used at some point). We […]
India’s Capex Moves From Stability to Growth
India’s capex has been stable at around 30-35% of GDP for much of the past decade. Tech investments are an increasingly large portion of India’s capex but are not being picked-up by the official data. Whilst Government data suggests that India’s capex stands at 30% of GDP, if we adjust for technology investments in the […]
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