Three Longs & Three Shorts

Aug 2020

Week 1

Short Read

Published on 02 Aug, 2020

You Can Stop Cleaning Your Mail Now

As our first long read this week says, our understanding of the Coronavirus has been only gradually improving through...

Published on 02 Aug, 2020

The Age of Mass Surveillance Will Not Last Forever

Last week, we featured a piece on the geo-political implications of the business of the internet and how data is at...

Published on 02 Aug, 2020

The Ugly Scramble

Last week, the Reserve Bank of India published its Financial Stability Report which said the NPAs in Indian banks are...

Long Read

Published on 02 Aug, 2020

Google’s Top Search Result? Surprise ! It̵...

Last week, we featured a piece on how Jio is likely to achieve what no other telecom operator in the world has managed...

Published on 02 Aug, 2020

Market twists and turns, unraveled

Peter Oppenheimer, Goldman Sachs’ chief global equity strategist, has published a new book. Titled “The Long Good...

Published on 02 Aug, 2020

The Long Game of Coronavirus Research

If you are one of those who believes that a Coronavirus vaccine is just around the corner, you need to read this...

Jul 2020

Week 4
Week 3
Week 2
Week 1

Short Read

Published on 26 Jul, 2020

A Masterclass In Leadership: The Last Dance

Our readers have been on a roll sending us super interesting stuff to read. Many thanks and please keep them coming....

Published on 26 Jul, 2020

The Role of Cognitive Dissonance in the Pandemic

In last week’s 3L&3S we featured a piece about “Why facts don’t change our minds?”. One of our readers...

Published on 26 Jul, 2020

India, Jio, and the Four Internets

Ben Thompson is one of the more insightful commentators on the strategy aspects of technology. In this piece, he...

Long Read

Published on 26 Jul, 2020

Why Remote Work Is So Hard – and How It Can Be...

We have been featuring quite a few pieces on Working From Home (WFH) for it affects most of us in a meaningful way and...

Published on 26 Jul, 2020

Racist issues continue in South Africa cricket 29 ye...

For those of us who came of age in the 1990s, the liberation of South Africa from apartheid was probably the most...

Published on 26 Jul, 2020

Five dangerous things you should let your kids do

In this TED talk the speaker says that we don’t help our kids by making the world around them as safe as possible....

Short Read

Published on 19 Jul, 2020

The USD 30 Billions Sales-&-Leaseback of India&...

Twin short reads on India’s internet economy – the first on how India is selling itself short and the second on how...

Published on 19 Jul, 2020

Has Warren Buffett Lost His Touch?

The preceding two short reads being both on technology is in-line with the rising frequency of technology related...

Published on 19 Jul, 2020

‘TikTok Changed My Life’: India’s ...

Vibhu Arya’s plan to localise India’s digital economy has already received a boost by the Indian government’s ban...

Long Read

Published on 19 Jul, 2020

Covid Vaccine Front-Runner is Months Ahead of Her Co...

The race to develop a coronavirus vaccine is unprecedented in more ways than one. First, the importance of it all –...

Published on 19 Jul, 2020

Who gets to be reckless on Wall Street?

In the wake of the day trading frenzy which has swept across America and India during the Covid lockdown, there has...

Published on 19 Jul, 2020

Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds

When we are young we used to participate in impassioned debates centred around causes we believed in. As we grow older,...

Short Read

Published on 12 Jul, 2020

How Hindi films edged closer to Hollywood over the p...

Bollywood, as the Hindi film industry is widely referred to, is most known for its colourful ‘song and dance’...

Published on 12 Jul, 2020

PlayStation’s secret weapon: a nearly all-auto...

In May this year, the Indian Prime Minister launched the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan’ or...

Published on 12 Jul, 2020

The Long Unhappy History of Working From Home

In the first few days of the lockdown, we featured a piece in 3L-3S, which waxed eloquent about the benefits of Working...

Long Read

Published on 12 Jul, 2020

The Attack of The Civilization State

Much has been written about the rise of hyper-nationalism with strong men at the helm across countries the world over....

Published on 12 Jul, 2020

How Berkshire Hathaway May Have Been Snookered in Ge...

We spend a significant amount of our time in Marcellus probing our investee companies’ accounts for fraud &...

Published on 12 Jul, 2020

The 5 Elements That Make For An Outstanding Business

Whilst this piece is written in the context of investing in the United States, it gels nicely with Marcellus’...

Short Read

Published on 05 Jul, 2020

More Younger People Are Testing Positive for the Cor...

Daily new cases in the US after having been on a decline for almost two months has surged again in the past two weeks...

Published on 05 Jul, 2020

Why is Gold Valuable?

Last week, we published a blog “The Most Damaging Myths of Indian Investing” in which the first myth we attempted...

Published on 05 Jul, 2020

Eyes in the sky

The Kumbh Mela is said to be one of the world’s largest human congregations attracting tens of millions of pilgrims...

Long Read

Published on 05 Jul, 2020

Did a Chinese Hack Kill Canada’s Greatest Tech...

For some of us who graduated at the turn of the millennium as electronics and communication engineers, Nortel Networks...

Published on 05 Jul, 2020

How Would Investors React If We Finally Get Some Inf...

In last week’s edition of ‘Three Longs & Three Shorts’ we highlighted the views of Russell Napier and Albert...

Published on 05 Jul, 2020

How to think under pressure

Maria Konnikova used to work for the New Yorker. In January 2017 she took a sabbatical from her job to pursue an...

Jun 2020

Week 4
Week 2
Week 1

Short Read

Published on 28 Jun, 2020

Mounting clues suggest the coronavirus might trigger...

Despite the continued rise in new daily cases in Brazil, India and Russia and the southern parts of the US, rising...

Published on 28 Jun, 2020

Nestle Hired a Psychoanalyst to Convert a Nation to ...

Marketing professionals often look for a ‘hook’ to connect with the consumer, so as to build that trust about the...

Published on 28 Jun, 2020

If Inflation Is Coming, the Market Isn’t Ready

Modern Monetary Theory is referred to the approach used by governments and central banks globally since the Lehman...

Published on 22 Jun, 2020

The pandemic has shown that amazon is essential R...

This week’s The Economist carries this piece in its Leaders section with a caricature of Jeff Bezos that has a...

Published on 22 Jun, 2020

Robert Clive was a vicious asset-stripper. His statu...

As Indians attempt to build an “Atmanirbhar Bharat” (self-reliant India), here’s a piece about a man who...

Published on 22 Jun, 2020

Terry Smith’s Owners Manual – 14 Filters For Purchas...

Few people in fund management can claim to be as iconoclastic as Terry Smith. For many of us at Marcellus, Terry is an...

Long Read

Published on 28 Jun, 2020

How Elon Musk aims to revolutionise battery technology

The Paypal Mafia is used to refer to the founders of Paypal who after selling out to e-Bay have gone on to found...

Published on 28 Jun, 2020

Same As It Ever Was

Back in mid-March when we were asking investors to be rational in their response to Covid, we cited a Morgan Housel...

Published on 28 Jun, 2020

The Dharavi unlock: How daily new cases down to sing...

One of the many tragic aspects of the hysteria around Covid back in March 2020 was the enthusiasm with which...

Published on 22 Jun, 2020

How Exactly Do You Catch Covid-19? There Is a Growin...

Two weeks ago, the World Health Organisation issued a statement saying asymptomatic carriers are rare transmitters of...

Published on 22 Jun, 2020

Marc Andreessen on time management

Marc Andreessen has been an influential thinker and VC for twice as long as Peter Thiel. In this interview with Sriram...

Published on 22 Jun, 2020

The Gospel According to Peter Thiel

Love him or hate him, you cannot deny that Peter Thiel has been for some time now one of the most prescient thinkers in...

Short Read

Published on 14 Jun, 2020

Playing the Market Has a Whole New Meaning

Every now and then we run into a prospect who at the end of the meeting would ask for a stock tip as a parting gift of...

Published on 14 Jun, 2020

How to Feed Crowds in a Protest or Pandemic? The Sik...

Amidst the pandemic and riots of 2020 when nothing seems to be going particularly right, the Sikh community in the US...

Published on 14 Jun, 2020

The ‘Don’t Worry, Make Money’ Stra...

At Marcellus, we embrace the risk minimisation approach to investing which reflects our team’s highly sceptical view...

Long Read

Published on 14 Jun, 2020

The Looming Bank Collapse

One key difference between the current Covid crisis and the 2008 Lehman crisis, often cited by experts, is the fact...

Published on 14 Jun, 2020

On Days of Disorder [Or why do Riots Happen?]

Over the past decade a long held tragic Indian custom, the communal riot, has made a comeback. In parallel, we have now...

Published on 14 Jun, 2020

“The Decade of Design”: How the last 10 years ...

One of the most interesting aspects of professional life is that whatever skill is currently the rage – the skill...

Short Read

Published on 07 Jun, 2020

Zoom fatigue is real — here’s why video calls are so...

Despite the lockdown, most people we speak to claim to have busier than normal schedules, thanks to Zoom or the ease...

Published on 07 Jun, 2020

Remote Work Could Spark Housing Boom in Suburbs, Sma...

A much needed economic boost could come from the unlikeliest of sources – a housing boom. As both employees and...

Published on 07 Jun, 2020

People Who Have “Too Many Interests” Are More Likely...

This is the third consecutive week we have featured a piece form Michael Simmons, this time a slightly dated 2018 blog...

Long Read

Published on 07 Jun, 2020

Charley Ellis: Why Active Investing Is Still A Loser...

Few people can claim to understand the world of investment management as well as Charley Ellis does. Here’s why:...

Published on 07 Jun, 2020

Lavish Parties, Greedy Pols and Panic Rooms: How the...

If one thing scares us more than staring at the P/E multiples of low quality companies it is investing in companies...

Published on 07 Jun, 2020

‘It’s bullshit’: Inside the weird, get-rich-quick wo...

There is plenty of talk in India these days regarding how India can try to pull business away from China in the wake of...

May 2020

Week 5
Week 3
Week 2
Week 1

Short Read

Published on 31 May, 2020

The Last Dance’ and lessons in leadership

For most Indians, the first experience of watching the NBA live on TV was in the early nineties with the arrival of...

Published on 31 May, 2020

As WeWorks lie empty, coworking spaces face their da...

The WeWorks fiasco may have been a result of its’ founder Adam Neuman’s shenanigans fueled by Softbank’s...

Published on 31 May, 2020

Old style investing doesn’t work anymore, says...

The chorus of the end of value investing the way it was known and practised is getting louder and louder with more...

Long Read

Published on 31 May, 2020

While Everyone Is Distracted By Social Media, Succes...

One of the key reasons to publish ‘Three longs and three shorts’ is that in a world with information overload,...

Published on 31 May, 2020

The great depression paradox: Children survived, the...

Millions of parents around the world are fretting about the impact of the lockdown on their children. This article from...

Published on 31 May, 2020

Where do eels come from?

Every now and then we across an article which makes us realise just how little we understand of the world around us....

Short Read

Published on 17 May, 2020

Covid is teaching us that force of nature is bigger ...

Despite being a political appointment, the Reserve Bank of India has been blessed with some illustrious Governors at...

Published on 17 May, 2020

Mathematics of investing and life

Nalanda Capital is one of the most successful investment firms that have come up in the last couple of decades and one...

Published on 17 May, 2020

Is your strategy good enough to move you up on the p...

Earlier this week, we published a blog about the rising concentration of profits in India amongst a handful of...

Long Read

Published on 17 May, 2020

The Price of Discipline

The proliferation of the blog scene has thrown several interesting writers but few can combine original thought and...

Published on 17 May, 2020

How the face mask became the world’s most cove...

This long read from The Guardian encapsulates all that is right about global capitalism (eg. lightning fast responses...

Published on 17 May, 2020

The Man Who Thought Too Fast

The greatness of the New Yorker lies not just in writing well researched articles on well known people (eg. Yuval Noah...

Short Read

Published on 11 May, 2020

Shanghai Disneyland Sells Out Of Tickets For Post-Sh...

Just earlier this week, the FT’s Alphaville wrote about ‘Introducing, the Disney Park Indicator’ as ‘the...

Published on 11 May, 2020

The Landscape Has Changed For Traditional Value Inve...

Bruce Greenwald is a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business and the author of the...

Published on 11 May, 2020

Extreme returns

Here’s one piece which highlights the merits of active investing and yet shows why it is so hard to generate alpha....

Long Read

Published on 11 May, 2020

Naseeruddin Shah: ‘Irrfan’s legacy is li...

For those who aspire to excellence, Naseeruddin Shah has long set the benchmark in Indian cinema. Over the past decade...

Published on 11 May, 2020

Cox and Kings Dossier – Parts 1 & 2: Audit unco...

Last week, we highlighted a piece in The Economist which highlighted that the ongoing economic crisis will bring to the...

Published on 11 May, 2020

Black swans, Black crows and Fund lies

In our conversations with investors, we find the emphasis is largely around returns and very little attention is paid...

Short Read

Published on 03 May, 2020

How to tap into creativity during lockdown

It is said that crises bring the best out of humanity. Whilst the world is looking forward to many innovations coming...

Published on 03 May, 2020

The World Is Still Producing More Oil Than It Needs....

As humanity’s love for automobiles grew, in turn pushing up the demand and therefore price of oil, supply side...

Published on 03 May, 2020

When You Have No Idea What Happens Next

Asking an analyst for this year’s earnings forecasts may sound ridiculous now given the complete uncertainty...

Long Read

Published on 03 May, 2020