Crook, TRP-hunter, idiot, clown: How Indian journalist fell from hero to zero for Bollywood
The world over, journalism has lost the prestige that it used to enjoy in the previous century. Whilst in this piece Shekhar Gupta focuses on how the Indian journalist went from hero to zero, the story Shekhar narrates is just as relevant for journalists plying their trade elsewhere.Shekhar uses the Hindi cinema’s portrayal of journalists […]
What is it about Peter Thiel?
Over the past 20 years Peter Thiel has been one of the most unusually influential figures of our era of technological change. We at Marcellus have learnt a lot from Thiel’s outstanding bestseller “Zero to One” and his seminal Youtube video “Competition is for losers” (you should see it right now if you haven’t seen […]
Exit the “Lala” Company, Enter the Little Champ
The degree to which a firm institutionalizes it’s systems & processes is one of the biggest sources of differentiation between a high quality versus a mediocre franchise. Hence in Marcellus’ Longevity Framework, our research on “succession planning” focuses on softer aspects such as the institutionalization of the business, the quality of the independent Board Directors […]
FILE NOT FOUND – A generation that grew up with Google is forcing professors to rethink their lesson plans
Author: Monica Chin Source: The Verge (https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z ) For many of us, the Windows explorer with its folder tree structure is an elegant way of storing and retrieving files from our computers. However, as in the several instances this piece highlights, kids, particularly those born in or after the nineties, struggle with such a file-folder […]
The dawn of the quantitative tightening era?
Authors: Robin Wigglesworth Source: The Financial Times (https://www.ft.com/content/e6590151-2659-47b7-9857-7ac120496b19 ) Rising inflation and the likely liquidity tightening would be the foremost risk to financial markets most market participants would agree in the current environment. Whilst we did feature a piece last week on how the broken global supply chain is causing persistent inflation, as Milton Friedman quoted “inflation […]
Hot Streaks in Your Career Don’t Happen by Accident
Author: Derek Thompson Source: The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/hot-streaks-in-your-career-dont-happen-by-accident/620514/ ) Hot streak or a purple patch as they call them in sports, refers to glorious periods in an individual’s career. This piece by Derek Thompson is about economist Dashun Wang whose research focuses on understanding these hot streaks, how they occur and if can we consciously cause their occurrence?“The […]
Is Amazon Changing the Novel?
Author: Parul Sehgal Source: New Yorker (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/01/is-amazon-changing-the-novel-everything-and-less) Parul Sehgal’s piece is based on a new book published by literary scholar, Mark MGurl, in which he looks at Amazon’s impact on how authors write: “…the literary scholar Mark McGurl considers all the ways a new behemoth has transformed not only how we obtain fiction but how […]
Cult figure of investing one of few to grasp early promise of internet stocks
Authors: Miles Johnson and Jamie PowellSources: Financial Times (https://www.ft.com/content/23590a90-c3b9-481a-aa42-42e553a4670e and https://www.ft.com/content/599e02fc-b051-4f12-8313-c2854d5b76f4) A few months ago we highlighted in 3 Longs & 3 Shorts the collected newsletters of the incredibly successful Nomad Partnership run by Qais Zakaria and Nicholas Sleep (click here for the newsletters https://marcellus.in/story/the-full-collection-of-the-nomad-investment-partnership-letters-to-partners/). In case you missed reading the newsletters here is why […]
The Path to Consistent Compounding is Paved with Free Cashflow
There are four key drivers of free cashflow in a business – revenue growth, profit margins, working capital efficiency, and asset turnover. The order of importance across these four drivers differs across businesses. As Marcellus’ CCP companies invest in technology to improve operational efficiencies, those companies that sell day-to-day essentials to their customers whilst avoiding […]
The most brilliant bookshops in the world
Good old physical bookshops have been shutting down across the world, partly driven by the convenience of buying online or reading e-books but also the changing habits of people consuming content through blogs, podcasts and videos. But many of us though still enjoy the experience of a bookshop. It is that festive time of the […]
Cadbury ad shows how the ad industry is becoming AI-savvy
Cadbury ads have always invoked emotions of warmth with a social messaging underpinning it, especially the ones around Diwali. Continuing from last year’s focus on lending a helping hand to small businesses hurt by the pandemic, this year’s Diwali ad featuring Shahrukh Khan goes one step further by leveraging artificial intelligence to let small businesses use the […]
How the Supply Chain Broke, and Why It Won’t Be Fixed Anytime Soon
With the recent FOMC minutes revealing that the Fed is ready to taper, thanks to the persistently high inflation much to the disbelief of central bankers who until now reckoned that the supply constraints driving high prices were likely to be transient in nature. In this explanatory piece in the New York Times, Peter Goodman […]
For more content on our strategy, visit the archives GO TO ARCHIVES