Sequoia Productive Capital
A few weeks ago, the 3L&3S featured a podcast with Sequoia partner Roelof Botha on its decision to change their fund structures from finite lives to perpetual structures. Ben Thompson, the brilliant analyst focusing on everything to do with technology comes up with a more strategic explanation for this move. He draws upon Carlota Perez’s book “Technological Revolutions […]
The ‘Tesla-financial complex’: how carmaker gained influence over the markets
Tesla has been a game changing force in more than obvious ways. It is a trillion dollar company no doubt but as this piece by Robin Wigglesworth in the FT shows, it punches even way above that when it comes to its influence in the market. Take for instance, the hyperactivity in Tesla options – […]
Chancellor: Investors unprepared for carbon crunch
This long piece Edward Chancellor reframes the clean energy debate in a new, and unfortunately more worrying, way. Chancellor begins with what is now familiar territory for the most of us: “Over the past 250 years, the abundant use of coal, and later oil and natural gas, has spurred industrialisation, lifted living standards, and increased […]
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, […]
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