Why are we underperforming the Bank Nifty?
Since its inception about fifteen months ago, the Kings of Capital Portfolio (KCP) has delivered annualized returns of 34% vs. 54% for the Bank Nifty. The underperformance of the KCP portfolio is a factor of: (i) fund composition vs. that of the index – Bank Nifty consists of only banks vs. KCP has an allocation […]
The welcome spread of assisted dying
Euthanasia or ‘assisted dying’ as it is called these days is becoming legal in more and more countries. Liberals believe that freedom should also include one’s choice of the manner and timing of their death as well. Whilst many countries are legalising it, the debate is far from over, argues this piece in The Economist, […]
A look at the metaverse through four lenses of a metamorphosis
We have featured pieces on the Metaverse in recent months, about what they mean by it and what implications it may have for all of us. But with Facebook diving right into it by going as far as changing its name to Meta, interest has shot up even more in the past few days. Jaspreet […]
How to Invest Your Money When Inflation is High
The dreaded inflation print is out. Earlier this week, the US Labor department reported that Consumer Price Inflation for October was 6.1%, the highest in 30yrs. Over the past few months, we have featured pieces about how much of this is demand driven as opposed to the broken global supply chain and hence how much […]
Sequoia’s Crucible Moment – Podcast with partner Roelof Botha
The venture capital industry has never had it better. The last three decades has seen technology led disruption of long surviving brick and mortar business models, which has allowed many a VC funded David to become Goliaths. Such rapidly scaled businesses which have become utterly dominant monopolies whilst still owned by the VC has prompted […]
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 […]
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