Three Longs & Three Shorts

Mar 2020

Week 5
Week 4
Week 3
Week 2
Week 1

Short Read

Published on 29 Mar, 2020

The “new” trend of 8D audio explained; what is it an...

At 3L-3S, we have featured the developments in audio tech, especially as it gets personalised with headphones and...

Published on 29 Mar, 2020

The Hardest Part of a Buy & Hold Strategy

Whilst Marcellus strategies have significantly outperformed during this fall, they too have fallen considerably in...

Published on 29 Mar, 2020

Denmark’s Idea Could Help the World Avoid a Gr...

By now we have seen most countries come up with stimulus programs to help prevent a catastrophic economic collapse...

Long Read

Published on 29 Mar, 2020

The Computer Pioneer Who Built Modern China

We often meet people in India who look at China in admiration and say wistfully that “if only we too had an...

Published on 29 Mar, 2020

How the Pandemic Will End

As the world grapples with the here and now of the challenges posed to human life and the economy alike, here is a...

Published on 29 Mar, 2020

Common Enemies

A popular view doing the rounds these days is that the battle against Coronavirus is nothing short of a full scale war...

Long Read

Published on 22 Mar, 2020

Why What Does Not Kill Us Makes Us Panic

When we were college in the 1990s, “risk” was something that only Risk Management Professionals did. They even had...

Published on 22 Mar, 2020

Too Busy? Make Time To ‘Do Nothing’

Many of us think that when in our leisure time we read stuff on the internet or on social media, we are not...

Published on 22 Mar, 2020

The Man Who Saw the Pandemic Coming

This is an interview in the Nautilus with Dennis Caroll, the man who has been at the forefront of researching potential...

Short Read

Published on 22 Mar, 2020

Stopping the rot: the fight to save fresh food

Away from the doom and gloom of Covid-19, some good news from the world of material sciences – a technology to reduce...

Published on 22 Mar, 2020

A Recession is a Public Health Necessity. Here’...

Whilst the world has now accepted the importance of social distancing as the main tool to contain the spread of the...

Published on 22 Mar, 2020

Yuval Noah Harari: the world after coronavirus

Earlier this week, Yuval Noah Harari, known for his fascinating book on history ‘Sapiens’, created a furore with...

Short Read

Published on 15 Mar, 2020

The Test offers plenty even for those who hate the A...

This piece is a review of a documentary that began streaming on Amazon Prime Video earlier this week – a documentary...

Published on 15 Mar, 2020

The One Guarantee in the Stock Market

Losses in the stock market are a feature, not a bug – and we have another grim yet timely reminder of that. When...

Published on 15 Mar, 2020

How canceled events and self-quarantines save lives,...

Elon Musk reckons the ‘Coronavirus panic is dumb’. Several others have criticised the panic reaction of bringing...

Long Read

Published on 15 Mar, 2020

The Coronavirus Is Creating a Huge, Stressful Experi...

We are living in such times that WTF is no longer the most popular three letter acronym featuring the letters W and F,...

Published on 15 Mar, 2020

The boys learning anti-sexism in India

In India we have almost become indifferent to reading about crimes against women. For decades now the daily news has...

Published on 15 Mar, 2020

We’re not prepared for the end of Moore’s Law

At Marcellus, we go wild with happiness when we find well written, insightful reading material. This piece fits that...

Short Read

Published on 08 Mar, 2020

The Tesla Experiment

When it comes to investors’ irrational exuberance in the markets, it does seem like it is no different from a...

Published on 08 Mar, 2020

The Gap Between Large and Small Companies Is Growing...

Popular belief amongst investors is that large companies tend to grow slower, especially given that the size tends to...

Published on 08 Mar, 2020

Scientists reveal the number of times you are consci...

We agonise over how smartphones and social media have reduced our attention span and made us distractible in general....

Long Read

Published on 08 Mar, 2020

The Coronavirus Is No 1918 Pandemic

As the number of countries reporting incidences of patients with Coronavirus symptoms rises, fear and panic has gripped...

Published on 08 Mar, 2020

Kids Don’t Need to Stay ‘On Track’ to Succeed

Whilst most of us at Marcellus have self-selected ourselves to get off the beaten track, many of us are as worried as...

Published on 08 Mar, 2020

Why so many of the world’s oldest companies are in J...

Given that we like investing in outstanding franchises which produce stellar free cashflows for decades on end, we are...

Short Read

Published on 01 Mar, 2020

Can religion fight climate change?

At a time when newsflow associated with religion has been rather acerbic, here is a refreshing piece about how religion...

Published on 01 Mar, 2020

Spies often use businesses as cover

The fascinating world of espionage has inspired many authors and film makers alike over the years and continue to...

Published on 01 Mar, 2020

Fund managers are not like sports stars (but donR...

Fund managers often attain star status after a period of strong outperformance. Indeed, it helps the asset management...

Long Read

Published on 01 Mar, 2020

Dollar Cost Averaging vs. Lump Sum: The Definitive G...

We often get asked by clients if we can take their lumpsum and deploy into x equal tranches over the next x...

Published on 01 Mar, 2020

Cathie Wood, the Best Investor You’ve Never Heard Of

Given our idiosyncratic style of investing, we have become accustomed to people giving us a bit of stick for how we...

Published on 01 Mar, 2020

How To Help Your Kids Find Their Calling In Life: 4 ...

This blog is based on a book called “The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life” by William...

Feb 2020

Week 4
Week 3
Week 2
Week 1

Short Read

Published on 23 Feb, 2020

The everyday device in your home killing hundreds ar...

Steve Jobs is believed to have famously said how he wouldn’t let his kids use the iPad or smartphones in general....

Published on 23 Feb, 2020

New Firms for a New Era

An oft touched upon subject in 3L-3S is that of an inclusive capitalism, which goes beyond just serving the owners of...

Published on 23 Feb, 2020

How to put out a bright spark

At Marcellus, we have written about the formalisation of the economy driven by GST among other factors and the...

Long Read

Published on 23 Feb, 2020

Never Has a Venial Sin Been Punished This Quickly an...

There have been proclamations about how value investing, at least value investing as we know it, is dead – such as...

Published on 23 Feb, 2020

Indian tequila: one man’s quest to perfect a nationa...

This is the remarkable story of how tequila began to be manufactured in India’s Deccan Plateau. The stuff is so...

Published on 23 Feb, 2020

Yuval Noah Harari’s History of Everyone, Ever

For a historian to be profiled in a 10,000 word article in the New Yorker, which is arguably the world’s best...

Short Read

Published on 16 Feb, 2020

Robot Analysts Outwit Humans in Study of Profit From...

Humans are losing to robots in a rapidly rising number of industries. If ‘Robo Advisors’ have taken off in the...

Published on 16 Feb, 2020

Netflix Already Won the Oscars

This article was written just before the actual Academy awards night. And the conclusion wouldn’t have been any...

Published on 16 Feb, 2020

History is Only Interesting Because Nothing is Inevi...

Another brilliantly researched piece by Morgan Housel bringing out a simple yet hard to believe reality...

Long Read

Published on 16 Feb, 2020

The Outsize Influence of Your Middle-School Friends

Increasing bodies of research show that social relationships are perhaps the biggest drivers of happiness, thanks to...

Published on 16 Feb, 2020

The (Easily Misunderstood) Yale Model

This outstanding piece from the legend that is Charles Ellis provides a far deeper understanding of Yale’s famous...

Published on 16 Feb, 2020

IBM made IIT Kanpur what it is. It just returned the...

In a world where those who don’t display bigotry vis a vis foreigners are not seen as real men, The Print has a...

Short Read

Published on 09 Feb, 2020

1917 Is a Video Game Come to Life

It is the Oscars night. Hence, it is topical to feature a piece on a movie that is a front runner for winning the best...

Published on 09 Feb, 2020

A matter of fact: New study shows how Indians respon...

Whilst user generated content or social media has had its benefits on access to information as well as quality and...

Published on 09 Feb, 2020

New Thinking Emerges on Optimal Tenure for a CEO

At Marcellus, whilst we look for companies with institutionalised culture, systems and processes thereby reducing the...

Long Read

Published on 09 Feb, 2020

U.S. renters are richer, older, and have larger hous...

A week before Ben Carlson’s piece, this article came up in the Curbed coming at the income disparity challenge from a...

Published on 09 Feb, 2020

The rich own stocks, the middle class own homes. How...

Ben Carlson comes at the inequality challenge from an asset class ownership point of view. Over the last decade or so...

Published on 09 Feb, 2020

Old People Have All the Interesting Jobs in America

Tyler Cowen sheds light on an issue which has puzzled many of us over the past 20 years. Here is the conundrum: in the...

Short Read

Published on 02 Feb, 2020

Security analysis at Columbia Business Schol

The last couple of decades have seen a new stream of sources of information and insight with the emergence of social...

Published on 02 Feb, 2020

The Revolution Comes to Davos

It is that time of the year when billionaires across the world come together at the Swiss ski resort town of Davos to...

Published on 02 Feb, 2020

This book put me to sleep

You can’t go too wrong with your reading if you have Bill Gates making your reading list. In this blog post, he...

Long Read

Published on 02 Feb, 2020

Virgin Galactic And The Potential of Space Tourism

Kevin Rooke is a young independent analyst focusing on investment research on technology companies. Some of his other...

Published on 02 Feb, 2020

Is Singapore’s ‘perfect’ economy c...

Friends in Singapore keep telling us that it ain’t like the good old times in the city. The city apparently as...

Published on 02 Feb, 2020

How Private Equity Wrecked New York’s Favourit...

Although private equity (PE) in India has barely been around for 20 years, many of us have already seen some of our...

Jan 2020

Week 4
Week 3
Week 2
Week 1

Short Read

Published on 26 Jan, 2020

Johns Hopkins University Reimagines the M.B.A.

At Marcellus, we prefer to hire our research analysts via an internship program and for interns we tend to lean towards...

Published on 26 Jan, 2020

Why India faces a public funding crisis

Rathin Roy is perhaps one of India’s finest macro economists currently. He made headlines last year for suggesting...

Published on 26 Jan, 2020

The Investor’s Fallacy – Why Markets are...

“In God we trust, others must bring data” is a quote attributed to Deming. But Nick Maggiulli is perhaps one of the...

Long Read

Published on 26 Jan, 2020

Tomorrow’s industries: from OLEDs to nanomaterials

In his incredibly fascinating book Loonshots, Safi Bahcall discusses how serendipity plays a role in most big...

Published on 26 Jan, 2020

Why every company needs a Chief Fun Officer

It is worth ignoring the puerile title of this piece and focusing on the more substantive point made by the...

Published on 26 Jan, 2020

Manchester United Is the General Electric of Football

This article draws an interest parallel between capital allocation in the corporate world and that in the world of...

Short Read

Published on 19 Jan, 2020

What’s in the Forecast: Private Weather Predic...

The movie industry globally has had this Sci- Fi sub-genre “Climatic Apocalypse” movies, which gained...

Published on 19 Jan, 2020

Phil Fisher: The Art of Holding On

At Marcellus, we believe that identifying a great company is hard enough, selling them is harder and continuing to hold...

Published on 19 Jan, 2020

How Slack ruined work

Technology has made the world smaller & closer but there is a flip slide to it. Instant messaging apps like Slack,...

Long Read

Published on 19 Jan, 2020

China Spins a Trade-Deal Trap in Bad Debt Market

Like India, China’s financial system is also grappling with a mountain of bad debts which now stands at a staggering...

Published on 19 Jan, 2020

Boeing Hands Over Internal Employee Messages Describ...

A month ago we highlighted a long essay on how Boeing went from moated CCP-type franchise to a company run by cost...

Published on 19 Jan, 2020

A World Without Pain: Does Hurting Make Us Human?

Joanne Cameron, a 72-year old retired school teacher living in a village in the Scottish Highlands, suffers from a rare...

Short Read

Published on 12 Jan, 2020

Installing air filters in classrooms has surprisingl...

Every winter, the problem of air pollution in Indian cities gets exacerbated with severe consequences on both...

Published on 12 Jan, 2020

Compounding Knowledge

At Marcellus, we are obsessed about the concept of compounding. Our purpose is to help our clients fulfil their...

Published on 12 Jan, 2020

Bartender School

Joshua Brown is yet another good writer from Ritholtz Wealth Management. Here he talks about what he learnt as a...

Long Read

Published on 12 Jan, 2020

3 Reasons It’s So Hard to “Follow Your Passion

The most common advice young graduating students at the cusp of choosing their careers, in particular receive is to...

Published on 12 Jan, 2020

You’ll see the sky crawling”: Astronomers fear that ...

The term ‘space pollution’ is being increasingly used by astronomers as human interest and hence activity outside...

Published on 12 Jan, 2020

The Analog January Challenge

Thanks to two incredibly popular books – ‘Deep Work’ and ‘Digital Minimalism’ – Cal Newport’s status as a...

Short Read

Published on 05 Jan, 2020

At SoftBank’s Jewel in India: ‘ToxicR...

Softbank’s troubles don’t seem to be ending anytime soon. After the spectacular WeWork debacle, now fun and games...

Published on 05 Jan, 2020

The Top 20 Business Transformations of the Last Decade

Amongst many ‘looking back at the decade’ studies, this one is quite fascinating. A study by Innosight of the most...

Published on 05 Jan, 2020

Silicon Valley’ Exits With Serious Points About Big ...

3L-3S has been prolific in featuring the growing dominance of big tech, fascinated by its ability to take mankind...

Long Read

Published on 05 Jan, 2020

Workism Is Making Americans Miserable

“Work is worship” is a popular saying attributed to several people from the 12th century philosopher Basavanna to...

Published on 05 Jan, 2020

Fuzzy Math That Fuelled Junk Debt Boom Is Sparking J...

15 years ago when US mortgage lenders relaxed their lending criteria for individuals with relative low ability to...

Published on 05 Jan, 2020

The 2010s Were the End of Normal – How social ...

Given that many of us have spent our Christmas break speaking to friends and relatives who are either worried about the...

Dec 2019

Week 5
Week 4
Week 3
Week 2
Week 1

Short Read

Published on 29 Dec, 2019

The curious tale of how Japan got hooked on KFC at C...

There is almost a sense of purity when it comes Japanese cuisine with all the emphasis on the freshness of ingredients...

Published on 29 Dec, 2019

The buzz around AirPods

In last week’s 3L-3S, we featured a piece on how the emergence of headphones are actually influencing the sort of...

Published on 29 Dec, 2019

The ideal team size for a money manager to beat the ...

Michael Mauboussin, director of research at BlueMountain Capital Management, has conducted a study which looks at the...

Long Read

Published on 29 Dec, 2019

Can we break our addiction to plastic? The future of...

This video on Youtube of a marine conservation biologist trying to help a sea turtle relieve of a plastic straw up...

Published on 29 Dec, 2019

Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They’r...

If there’s one thing that has made smartphones the gamechanging tech of our lifetimes, it is the use of location data...

Published on 29 Dec, 2019

Are anti-competitive firms killing American innovation?

When the economist, Thomas Phillipon, moved to America in 1999, he found a country where high quality products were...

Short Read

Published on 22 Dec, 2019

The man who made the “worst” video game in history

We know of companies who have shot themselves in the foot going for instant glory and in the bargain sacrificing...

Published on 22 Dec, 2019

The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

Paul Graham is an investor, especially known for having founded Y Combinator, a successful incubation platform in...

Published on 22 Dec, 2019

How headphones are changing the sound of music

David Byrne’s book “How Music Works” talks about how music composition has a context to it. “For example, he...

Long Read

Published on 22 Dec, 2019

Why is Taking Action Hard?

As we approach the New Year, many of us are getting ready with our list of resolutions. Some of us will successfully...

Published on 22 Dec, 2019

Expect the Roaring ’10s for Stocks to Repeat in the ...

This piece uses a very useful framework created by John Bogle for his classic book published 30-years ago (titled...

Published on 22 Dec, 2019

My Favorite Investment Writing of 2019

As the Christmas break approaches, the team at Marcellus gets ready for some heavy duty reading over the holidays...

Short Read

Published on 15 Dec, 2019

How to Give People Advice They’ll Be Delighted to Take

Irrespective of our credentials, all of us tend to get approached for advice every now and then, from friends, family...

Published on 15 Dec, 2019

Beware Footnote Mischief

At Marcellus, a big part of our job is forensic analysis of Indian annual reports. Hence we are always interested to...

Published on 15 Dec, 2019

Ray Dalio Is More Famous Than Ever and Delivering Su...

As a fund manager, Ray Dalio – the founder of Bridgewater Associates – has attained celebrity status and is...

Long Read

Published on 15 Dec, 2019

The extraordinary story of the only B Corp in Afghan...

“People don’t buy what you do, they buy WHY you do it” says Simon Sinek in his hugely popular TedTalk...

Published on 15 Dec, 2019

How the Loss of the Landline Is Changing Family Life

The mobile phone will likely go down in history as the technology which had the biggest impact on people’s lives and...

Published on 15 Dec, 2019

The gospel of wealth according to Marc Benioff

In the run upto the next US presidential elections, it is inevitable that the topic of taxing the rich will be front...

Short Read

Published on 08 Dec, 2019

When is corruption good for growth?

Corruption is often attributed as one of the key impediments to development and growth. However, Shrabani Saha and...

Published on 08 Dec, 2019

All-Time Highs Are Both Scary & Normal

A common question from clients these days is “How comfortable are you investing now given the markets (and your...

Published on 08 Dec, 2019

How to Read: Lots of Inputs and a Strong Filter

We all know of people who read voraciously and keep wondering how do they manage so whilst we struggle through pages....

Long Read

Published on 08 Dec, 2019

Doctors are turning to YouTube to learn how to do su...

Social media and the rise of user-generated content has certainly bridged a lot of information gaps but also raised...

Published on 08 Dec, 2019

Hippie Inc: how the counterculture went corporate

We will shift focus from Silicon Valley’s darker side to its mellower side. The Hippie counterculture from the 1960s...

Published on 08 Dec, 2019

ADL International Leadership Award Presented to Sach...

For the first time we are kicking-off of ‘Three Longs & Three Shorts’ with a video because for the first time...

Short Read

Published on 01 Dec, 2019

We demand an absurd level of certainty from our poli...

It is said that intelligence is not static. Whilst we all are born with a certain IQ, it is possible that with...

Published on 01 Dec, 2019

The Joy of Finding Out

Equity analysts are not exactly rocket scientists but most analysts would agree equity research is quite a fulfilling...

Published on 01 Dec, 2019

Rituals and Routines

We are a big fan of routines and wrote a note on it six months...

Long Read

Published on 01 Dec, 2019