Three Longs & Three Shorts

May 2019

Week 2
Week 1

Short Read

Published on 12 May, 2019

Why radical transparency about salaries can pay off

The iconoclastic hedge fund manager, Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates emphasised about ‘radical transparency’ in...

Published on 12 May, 2019

Dear school leavers, don’t believe all the stories t...

In his latest blog, my colleague Saurabh Mukherjea writes about “The Tussle Between What we “Should do” &...

Published on 12 May, 2019

Could the single engine driving India crash? Yes, if...

It was about time someone brought the ‘middle income trap’ risk back to the front and centre of the discourse on...

Long Read

Published on 12 May, 2019

Kidnapping – A Very Efficient Business

This unusual and interesting article is a review of two books on kidnapping. These books are ‘We Want to Negotiate:...

Published on 12 May, 2019

The Truth about Dentistry

Millions of people dread sitting in the dentist’s chair and most of them can’t bear the sound of the dentist’s...

Published on 12 May, 2019

Vanguard Patented a Way to Avoid Taxes on Mutual Funds

Vanguard, the world’s second largest fund management house, continues to astound. Not contend with becoming a giant...

Short Read

Published on 05 May, 2019

Avoiding Stupidity is Easier than Seeking Brilliance

Farnam Street’s reiteration of its 2014 blog about a concept that we encounter everyday in our interactions with...

Published on 05 May, 2019

China’s ‘Debt Diplomacy’ Is a Misnomer. Call It ‘Cro...

Twin pieces with the latter cross-referencing the former, together summarising the point that China’s Belt and Road...

Published on 05 May, 2019

Political good girls are losing the battle

This FT article explains how our gender stereotypes influence women to think about the most appropriate course of...

Long Read

Published on 05 May, 2019

Progressive Capitalism Is Not an Oxymoron

A brilliantly articulated and constructive piece from the Nobel winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, in conversation with...

Published on 05 May, 2019

How the Kleiner Perkins Empire Fell

Once the home of rockstar VCs such as Vinod Khosla this Fortune article contends that legendary VC firm, Kleiner...

Published on 05 May, 2019

You played yourself

Insightful as ever, Morgan Housel takes us on a tour of the lesser known – but just as deadly – behavioural finance...

Apr 2019

Week 4
Week 3
Week 2
Week 1

Short Read

Published on 28 Apr, 2019

Big Tech’s Invasion of Banking

Much is being written about disruptions in banking from fintech. Yet this piece suggests that the traditional banks...

Published on 28 Apr, 2019

How to reduce digital distractions: advice from medi...

Most smartphone users can barely read a 1000 word essay without getting distracted or switching the screen a few times....

Published on 28 Apr, 2019

How to Identify Talent: Five Lessons from the NFL Draft

From our (limited) knowledge of American Football we know that the quarterback is the key player (filling the role of a...

Published on 28 Apr, 2019

Having Kids Is Terrible for Women’s Earning Power

This article quantifies what many of us have seen happening in our lives (or in the lives of our better halves). “At...

Published on 28 Apr, 2019

Netanyauism is Winning in Israel – and Globally

20 years ago for many non-Israelis, Israel looked like a strange country – a country created from the ravages of...

Published on 28 Apr, 2019

Elite men and inequality in the hedge fund industry

Megan Tobias Neely, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, tries to...

Long Read

Published on 28 Apr, 2019

Driving? The Kids Are So Over It

Last week, we wrote about the disruptions caused by the millenials’ changing attitude towards real estate ownership...

Published on 28 Apr, 2019

How Darwin Though: The Golden Rule of Thinking

Charlie Munger had said in 1986 that there is a reason why Charles Darwin achieved extraordinary things without an...

Published on 28 Apr, 2019

Traveling With Tagore

Ram Guha, himself a giant amongst contemporary scholars, makes a case for seeing Rabindranath Tagore as one of the...

Published on 28 Apr, 2019

How to Think About Taxing and Spending Like a Swede

Monica Prasad, a professor of sociology at Northwestern, discusses tax structures of various countries and its impact...

Long Read

Published on 21 Apr, 2019

How to Value a Pot Stock

After enough research to show marijuana or cannabis or good old pot is now less harmful than tobacco and alcohol,...

Published on 21 Apr, 2019

The Moral Peril of Meritocracy

This remarkable article from the NYT raises a toast to those who first fail in the great capitalist race to become rich...

Short Read

Published on 14 Apr, 2019

The Great Space Wait – How Virgin Galactic kept tick...

A beautiful piece on customer service, especially the role of customer communication when it comes to handling...

Published on 14 Apr, 2019

Replicating Buffet’s Wide Moat Investing Method

At Marcellus, we like the idea of using a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods for identifying firms with...

Published on 14 Apr, 2019

How single women are driving gentrification in Hong ...

All of us live with the knowledge the living in HK or London or even Bandra is an expensive affair. Many of us have...

Long Read

Published on 14 Apr, 2019

The humble zipper has profound things to tell us abo...

Zip manufacturing is not the most often discussed industries in investor forums. Yet this article brings out some key...

Published on 14 Apr, 2019

Thousands of Amazon Workers Listen to Alexa Users’ C...

Individuals’ right to privacy is one of the most intensely debated issues around the globe as technology has blurred...

Published on 14 Apr, 2019

Two’s Are Now Underestimated – The Mikan Drill For S...

This is an interesting and rewarding long read from an investment advisory firm in Houston. The article uses the stats...

Short Read

Published on 07 Apr, 2019

Mindfulness meditation in America has a capitalism p...

As scores of people across the world take to meditation as a tool to enhance mental health, this interview with David...

Published on 07 Apr, 2019

Why Eating Meat Was Banned in Japan for Centuries

Whilst India goes through its own debate over beef, it is intriguing to know that for over 12 centuries, meat eating...

Published on 07 Apr, 2019

In Kolkata, home is where the drama is

Kolkata is witnessing a new type of theatre. Called site-specific theatre, these are plays which are staged in the...

Long Read

Published on 07 Apr, 2019

The Chinese takeover of Indian app ecosystem

Chinese mobile handset manufacturers dominating the Indian mobile devices market was not surprising given their...

Published on 07 Apr, 2019

The World’s Cheapest Hospital Has to Get Even Cheaper

The article begins with a description of Dr Devi Shetty, the founder & promoter of Narayana Hrudayalaya – a chain...

Published on 07 Apr, 2019

DE Shaw: inside Manhattan’s ‘Silicon Valley’ hedge fund

In 1988, David Shaw, a computer science professor in Columbia University created a small company above a bookshop –...

Mar 2019

Week 5
Week 4
Week 3
Week 1

Short Read

Published on 31 Mar, 2019

How Instagram Replaced the Contacts List

Technology is changing the way we interact and communicate with each other and Instagram is fast becoming the preferred...

Published on 31 Mar, 2019

Can India provide water for all by 2030?

India draws a third of its water from aquifers. However, these aquifers are depleting at a rapid rate. “Most of the...

Published on 31 Mar, 2019

Money-losing companies that went public in 2018 did ...

In what looks like a classic sign of a “bubble”, public investors are valuing unprofitable companies higher than...

Long Read

Published on 31 Mar, 2019

Frontier market debt at a 15-year high

Oxford Economics says that thanks to aggressive bond investments from Chinese investors, public debt in frontier...

Published on 31 Mar, 2019

The Underground Railroad of North Korea

This is a thrilling read about the secret network of NGOs and brokers rescuing thousands of North Korean refugees...

Published on 31 Mar, 2019

Future shock: inside Google’s smart city

Since the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, data privacy and misuse of data are among the key concerns for...

Short Read

Published on 24 Mar, 2019

Your Environment Is Cleaner. Your Immune System Has ...

When one of our readers sent this article to us, I immediately forwarded it to the missus to score a point in the...

Published on 24 Mar, 2019

What makes a fulfilling career? Ask a teenager

When we are young, we want to do something creative, something fun in our lives. As we grow older, other considerations...

Published on 24 Mar, 2019

Qantas Airways CEO Delivered a Masterclass in Leader...

The article describes a remarkable exchange of letters between Irishman Alan Joyce is the CEO of Qantas Airways and 10...

Long Read

Published on 24 Mar, 2019

What the hell is going on?

Most of us would have observed and pondered over the effects of social media on various aspects of the society and...

Published on 24 Mar, 2019

‘We spoke English to set ourselves apart’: how I red...

Most of us in urban India often find it frustratingly amusing that how our kids can patiently respond in English to our...

Published on 24 Mar, 2019

Meet the safecracker of last resort

This story profiles Charlie Santore, a 48-year-old safecracker licensed in the city of Los Angeles. Charlie operates...

Short Read

Published on 17 Mar, 2019

China gains the upper hand over Germany

This perceptive piece from Wolfgang Munchau underscores just how powerful China has become relative to almost every...

Published on 17 Mar, 2019

Do not fear flying on the Boeing 737 Max

This piece was written before Trump grounded the 737 Max’s in America but most other countries had. Still, John...

Published on 17 Mar, 2019

How Merrill Lynch is Planning for its Customers to L...

As lifespans increase, there is good chance that many of us will live into our 90s. This is going to create new avenues...

Long Read

Published on 17 Mar, 2019

People think that data is in the cloud, but it’s not...

With wireless internet becoming ubiquitous, most of us are oblivious to the fact that much of the data criss-crossing...

Published on 17 Mar, 2019

Getting In – The social logic of Ivy League admissions

In the wake of last week’s American college admissions scandal (which ironically was brought to light thanks to...

Published on 17 Mar, 2019

How Parents of Child Influencers Package Their Kids’...

Parents are now spending serious time and effort get their kids’ images online from the time they are toddlers. Even...

Short Read

Published on 03 Mar, 2019

How data helps deliver your dinner on time—and warm

With Uber deciding to sell Uber Eats India to Swiggy for a stake in the latter, the food delivery space in India is...

Published on 03 Mar, 2019

Why living experimentally beats taking bets

A year ago, former Poker world champion, Annie Duke, published a superb book where she warned against the dangers of...

Long Read

Published on 03 Mar, 2019

Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

A superb piece from Charles Duhigg about what leads to job satisfaction. Charles, a Pullitzer prize winner and the...

Published on 03 Mar, 2019

Not Caring – A Unique and Powerful Skill

Morgan Housel may not come up with radically original thinking in everything he writes but he does have a special skill...

Published on 03 Mar, 2019

Germs in Your Gut Are Talking to Your Brain. Scienti...

Microbiomes are the trillions of microbes inside the healthy human body. This arresting New York Times article says...

Feb 2019

Week 3
Week 2
Week 1

Short Read

Published on 17 Feb, 2019

How a Naga tribe is challenging cliched notions of a...

Vrinda Shukla in her beautiful and eye-opening article questions the definition of backwardness. Vrinda shares her...

Published on 17 Feb, 2019

The Biggest Returns

Morgan Housel uses the energy efficiency analogy to bring out the point that we have a better shot at securing our...

Published on 17 Feb, 2019

Evidence deficit haunts billion-dollar brain trainers

In our quest to become smarter, many of us have to taken to using books, apps and trainers. In this piece, Anjana Ahuja...

Published on 17 Feb, 2019

The two tribes of working life

Office goers, says this column in The Economist, can be split into two groups. The first tribe are called FOMO: people...

Long Read

Published on 17 Feb, 2019

India Proposes Chinese-Style Internet Censorship

The Indian Government’s proposed amendment to the IT act to regulate content on social media and messaging platforms...

Published on 17 Feb, 2019

The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

A six year old article but a fascinating one nonetheless about the science that gets us addicted to junk food. Michael...

Published on 17 Feb, 2019

Tribal World – Group Identity is All

25 years ago Samuel Huntington had taught those who read his controversial book “The Class of Civilisations and the...

Short Read

Published on 10 Feb, 2019

Ikea furniture does not need to fall apart

In his succinct article, John discusses the adverse impact that consumption led growth has put on the environment and...

Published on 10 Feb, 2019

Bridgewater’s Self-Obsession Actually … Works?

Eileen Murray, the co-chief executive officer of Bridgewater Associates, spoke at a hedge fund conference this week,...

Long Read

Published on 10 Feb, 2019

The Trump era could last 30 years

Gideon Rachman raises the question whether Britain’s vote for Brexit and America’s election of Donald Trump are a...

Published on 10 Feb, 2019

Why women win in the long run

This remarkable FT article takes us into the world ultra-long distance running where the results show that women...

Published on 10 Feb, 2019

The Disturbing, Surprisingly Complex Relationship Be...

In an interesting new book called “White Identity Politics”, American political scientist Ashley Jardina of Duke...

Short Read

Published on 03 Feb, 2019

Another tech bubble could be about to burst

In his article, Rana Foroohar beautifully captures the downside of massive growth in the number of...

Published on 03 Feb, 2019

Cracks are opening in the global monetary system

Part of the fun of reading the legendary strategist Russell Napier is that we are reminded that we have so much more to...

Published on 03 Feb, 2019

Afroz Shah’s New Year Lesson

Priya Ramani, the Mint columnist whose spunk catalysed the “Me Too” movement in India last year, profiles a very...

Long Read

Published on 03 Feb, 2019