Three Longs & Three Shorts

May 2020

Week 3
Week 2
Week 1

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

Closing schools for covid-19 does lifelong harm and ...

The lives vs livelihood debate has become louder through the lockdown across the world with increasing calls to...

Published on 03 May, 2020

The staggering rise and incredible fall of a billion...

Whilst all of us have read about what happened in Café Coffee Day or Gitanjali or Amtek Auto or DHFL or IL&FS, it...

Published on 03 May, 2020

The economic crisis will expose a decade’s worth of ...

Every single day in Marcellus we tell our clients that at least 80% of Indian companies have suspect accounts. Further,...

Apr 2020

Week 4
Week 3
Week 2

Short Read

Published on 26 Apr, 2020

How a pandemic affects mental health

Much has been written about the rise of mental illnesses caused by the fear of pandemic and exacerbated by the...

Published on 26 Apr, 2020

Disney+ has a big fan: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings

We have often found that CEOs who build great businesses tend to have utmost respect for their competition. In what...

Published on 26 Apr, 2020

It’s time to build

Marc Andreessen, perhaps ranks right up there with a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs in terms of having an impact on...

Long Read

Published on 26 Apr, 2020

COVID-19: What’s wrong with the models?

With the number of daily new cases plateauing if not declining, some people are questioning all those models which...

Published on 26 Apr, 2020

Why this crisis is a turning point in history

In the wake of Covid, many people have written “it is the end of the world as we know it” essays. This piece by...

Published on 26 Apr, 2020

Keirin School: Inside the strict and secret world of...

For anyone pursuing excellence in life or at work, Japan, its people and its society are an endless source of...

Short Read

Published on 19 Apr, 2020

Pause, rewind, play: Words of wisdom from The Wall –...

At Marcellus, we are ardent fans of ‘The Wall’ – Rahul Dravid, not least because of the similarities between our...

Published on 19 Apr, 2020

Apple and Google want to turn your phone into a Covi...

It was just a matter of time. Given the efficacy of contact tracing in flattening the curve so far, to execute contact...

Published on 19 Apr, 2020

Lesson From Singapore: Why We May Need to Think Bigger

Most parts of the world, including the most severely affected United States are now reporting either a stagnation or a...

Long Read

Published on 19 Apr, 2020

Is Private Equity Having Its Minsky Moment?

In this fascinating long read, Matt Stoller tears into the Private Equity industry given the heavy indebtedness amidst...

Published on 19 Apr, 2020

What leader are you? It depends on your parents

Several of you might have wondered why some people are natural leaders – delegating tasks or ordering people about...

Published on 19 Apr, 2020

The Three Equations for a Happy Life, Even During a ...

Even by the high standards of the long essays published in The Atlantic, this piece is simply exceptional. The author...

Short Read

Published on 12 Apr, 2020

How Facebook and Google are helping the CDC forecast...

Contact tracing-testing-isolation has been a strategy several governments have adopted to control the Covid situation...

Published on 12 Apr, 2020

Robots Welcome to Take Over, as Pandemic Accelerates...

Industries which require employees to be physically present in the premises and hence can’t implement an effective...

Published on 12 Apr, 2020

If The Government Does Not Step In With Clear Incent...

The headline of this article could well be a common cry for help from several industries but the restaurant industry is...

Long Read

Published on 12 Apr, 2020

Hedge-Fund Geniuses Failed Again. When Will We Learn?

Brilliant piece by John Authers, the veteran markets commentator formerly with the FT. John brings back memories of...

Published on 12 Apr, 2020

The more you know a stock the worse your performance...

This blog from Klement renders yeoman service for HNWs by refuting the notion that HNWs should put all their eggs in...

Published on 12 Apr, 2020

Even Warren Buffett Can’t Nail the Bottom

50% of our calls with our clients during the lockdown hinges around the client probing us on whether the bottom has...

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