Published on 30 Jan, 2022
Early concepts of intimacy: Young humans use saliva ...
How babies and young children learn about the world around them has been a fertile and fascinating area of research...
Jan 2022
- Week 5
- Week 4
- Week 3
- Week 2
- Week 1
Short Read
Published on 30 Jan, 2022
Horses to helicopters, moustache to libraries — Dali...
At Marcellus, we remain keen observers of social change because far more the GDP growth or the prognostications of...
Published on 30 Jan, 2022
The High Cost of an Easy Job
Nick Maggiulli’s from Ritholtz explains in this piece why cushy jobs i.e. jobs where you have to do very little and...
Long Read
Published on 30 Jan, 2022
The Trillion-Dollar Gambling Game
Ever since it was created in the early 1990s, the English Premier League (EPL) has had a seedy underbelly wherein black...
Published on 30 Jan, 2022
Why Competitive Advantages Die
Since every week Mon-Fri, we remind our clients why great companies can sustain their competitive advantages for...
Published on 30 Jan, 2022
Inside the mysterious downfall of India’s Cox &...
Tea-time chats in our team have, for many years now, focused on the latest annual reports of India’s most corrupt...
Short Read
Published on 23 Jan, 2022
How often does Nandan Nilekani check his email? A ne...
A couple of years ago we published a book called “The Victory Project: Six Steps to Peak Potential in which we...
Published on 23 Jan, 2022
When hyping technology is a crime
The previous piece segues into this piece. Coming from the editor of Science, the most authoritative of scientific...
Published on 23 Jan, 2022
The Crytocurrency Deception
In this day and age of unrelenting hype around cryptocurrency, it is easy to lose sight of some basic facts. In this...
Long Read
Published on 23 Jan, 2022
China Is Watching Ukraine with a Lot of Interest
Vladimir Putin is going eyeball-to-eyeball with America and Western Europe in Ukraine and this article in Atlantic...
Published on 23 Jan, 2022
‘Colonialism had never really ended’: my...
You might want to have a strong drink before you read this hard hitting piece in The Guardian. This long read comes...
Published on 23 Jan, 2022
Review of Dr Jonathan Knee’s book “The Platform Delu...
If you are investing in tech companies you should read “The Platform Delusion”. You might disagree with some of the...
Short Read
Published on 16 Jan, 2022
Will Chatbots replace the art of human conversation?
The rise of artificial intelligence has raised concerns that as computers get smarter they will replace humans in most...
Published on 16 Jan, 2022
The Worrisome Rise of NFTs
Mostly one would have brushed aside the NFT mania as yet another bubble humanity has created and will eventually burst...
Published on 16 Jan, 2022
Does Not Compute
Not everything can be explained by numbers. In recent times, two eminent academics, one a Nobel laureate – Robert...
Long Read
Published on 16 Jan, 2022
Howard Marks’ Memo – Selling Out
We began 2021 with perhaps one of Howard Marks’ most remarkable memos – Something of Value, where the great man...
Published on 16 Jan, 2022
The Locker Room
In this superb guest post for the Collaborative Fund, Ted Lamade explains – using examples from sports and business...
Published on 16 Jan, 2022
The Alternative to Closing Schools
Last week, we learnt that the municipal corporation in Mumbai has ordered schools to remain closed for another six...
Short Read
Published on 09 Jan, 2022
Diamonds in the Dust
When we look back on 2021, most of us look back with a feeling of gloom. The devastating second wave of Covid-19 was a...
Published on 09 Jan, 2022
Are video games really addictive?
Many of us parents with teenage children often worry about how much time is ok for our kids to be on video games. The...
Published on 09 Jan, 2022
The end of the pandemic will not be televised
Just when we thought we had put the pandemic behind and begun to get on with our lives, Omicron has put the question...
Long Read
Published on 09 Jan, 2022
First Principles: The Building blocks of True Knowledge
Many of us struggle to learn new things after a certain age or deal with complex systems outside of our core domain....
Published on 09 Jan, 2022
Why do we buy into the ‘cult’ of overwork?
Those of us in Marcellus who spent our twenties and thirties burning the midnight oil realised in the middle our...
Published on 09 Jan, 2022
China’s troll king: how a tabloid editor became the ...
Chest thumping nationalism has become popular in many countries over the past decade. Whilst such nationalism becomes...
Short Read
Published on 02 Jan, 2022
Is a greener, faster and more decentralised alternat...
This piece is a counter of sorts to this week’s Long Read 3 about how tech is taking over geopolitics, at the core of...
Published on 02 Jan, 2022
Why Peter Thiel Searches for Reality-Bending ‘...
We have featured pieces of and by Peter Thiel (‘Zero to One’ being one of the key reasons to start Marcellus) in...
Published on 02 Jan, 2022
Buggy, Messy & all that
Over the past year or so, we have enjoyed reading several pieces by investor Anand Sridharan. In this piece, Anand...
Long Read
Published on 02 Jan, 2022
Great Protocol Politics – Bitcoin, Ethereum and Web3...
The digitalisation of the world, accelerated by the pandemic has meant that Silicon Valley is not only home to the...
Published on 02 Jan, 2022
Chesterton’s Fence: A Lesson in Second Order Thinking
Many of us were told by our teachers and our parents through our early teens to master chess because it forces you to...
Published on 02 Jan, 2022
R Ashwin: ‘I’ve always been good at asse...
What Rahul Dravid is to the world of batting – a legend who reimagined what it means to win matches for India with...
Dec 2021
- Week 4
- Week 3
- Week 2
- Week 1
Short Read
Published on 26 Dec, 2021
Anatomy of a GOAT: What makes Magnus Carlsen the wor...
Many sports are witnessing their current best players staking a credible claim on the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) tag...
Published on 26 Dec, 2021
Why Elon Musk Will go Down in History
Elon Musk is the Time magazine’s ‘Person of the Year’ and who better to write about it than Walter Isaacson....
Published on 26 Dec, 2021
Clean energy from nuclear fusion is our planet’s bes...
A couple of weeks ago we featured a piece by Edward Chancellor on climate change which ended on a bit of a worrying...
Long Read
Published on 26 Dec, 2021
How Y Combinator Changed the World
The world of venture investing is going through its best ever period in history helping create businesses disrupting...
Published on 26 Dec, 2021
Corner Stores Are the New Darlings of the Global Tec...
In India, we are seeing a clutch of VC funded start-ups and large corporate funded efforts to become a supplier to the...
Published on 26 Dec, 2021
Reviews of two related books linked by one powerful ...
These two books were published around 18 months ago but what has transpired in these 18 months makes it highly likely...
Short Read
Published on 19 Dec, 2021
The three acts of entrepreneurship that accelerated ...
India is going through a bull market of sorts for entrepreneurship with one of the most vibrant start-up ecosystems....
Published on 19 Dec, 2021
Meet the Kidd Who Goes Toe to Toe with Warren Buffett
A couple of years ago, our colleague Tej Shah wrote a blog What comes first – Strategy or Structure? arguing why...
Published on 19 Dec, 2021
What meerkats could teach a troubled Uber
In our newsletters, blogs and 3L&3S, we have attempted to understand and bring to light the power of network...
Long Read
Published on 19 Dec, 2021
A lack of chargers could stall the electric-vehicle ...
Few industries as large as the global automobile industry have been through the sort of disruption electric vehicles...
Published on 19 Dec, 2021
Book review “Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in...
Over the past couple of years we have highlighted the powerful ideas of the French philosopher Rene Girard who created...
Published on 19 Dec, 2021
My favourite investment writing of 2021
Before we set up Marcellus’ shopfront three years ago, we studied the work that the wealth managers at Ritholtz had...
Short Read
Published on 13 Dec, 2021
The Disrespect
Investing is no rocket science. It rarely requires superior technical skills to succeed. It is more behavioural. This...
Published on 12 Dec, 2021
Ralf Rangnick – The Three Cs
The last three UEFA Champions League Titles have all been won by teams with German coaches – two of them being...
Published on 12 Dec, 2021
Sequoia Productive Capital
A few weeks ago, the 3L&3S featured a podcast with Sequoia partner Roelof Botha on its decision to change their...
Long Read
Published on 12 Dec, 2021
The ‘Tesla-financial complex’: how carmaker gained i...
Tesla has been a game changing force in more than obvious ways. It is a trillion dollar company no doubt but as this...
Published on 12 Dec, 2021
Chancellor: Investors unprepared for carbon crunch
This long piece Edward Chancellor reframes the clean energy debate in a new, and unfortunately more worrying, way....
Published on 12 Dec, 2021
Terry Smith: “The problem is most people don’t read ...
When we were growing up as analysts in the early years of this century, we used to read and re-read Terry Smith’s...
Short Read
Published on 05 Dec, 2021
Enticing cricket toss proposal could give each side ...
There is always an element of luck in everything we do. But in the field of sport sometimes the role of luck might seem...
Published on 05 Dec, 2021
Charlie Penner, the Investor Reshaping Exxon Fro the...
At Marcellus, we often remind ourselves that the larger purpose of investing is beyond just generating returns or...
Published on 05 Dec, 2021
Omicron SARS-CoV-2 variant: a new chapter in the COV...
Whilst it is early days for us to have a definitive view on the new Covid variant – Omicron, we are all eager to know...
Long Read
Published on 05 Dec, 2021
Howard Marks: The Winds of Change
“When I see memos from Howard Marks in my mail they’re the first thing I open and read” is an oft cited quote...
Published on 05 Dec, 2021
Why Every Entrepreneur Should Study the Austrian Sch...
One of the most frustrating things about studying Economics is that has no conception of entrepreneurship because in a...
Published on 05 Dec, 2021
Sunder Genomal, the man who brought ‘Jockey...
At Marcellus, we have a large position in Page Industries, the Indian franchisee of Jockey undergarments. We have...
Nov 2021
- Week 4
- Week 3
- Week 2
- Week 1
Short Read
Published on 28 Nov, 2021
What if the Fed is Wrong?
The unprecedented amount of monetary and fiscal stimulus in the developed world has not only pulled the global economy...
Published on 28 Nov, 2021
Chief executives are weirder than ever
The role of the CEO has always been demanding. But with changing times, it has only become tougher, says this piece in...
Published on 28 Nov, 2021
Why staring at screens is making your eyeballs elong...
The emergence of smartphones had already increased the amount of time we spend staring at screens even before the...
Long Read
Published on 28 Nov, 2021
How to play the long game
Jeff Bezos reportedly said that the easiest way to eliminate competition is by prolonging your time horizon of focus,...
Published on 28 Nov, 2021
iPhone repair is Apple’s long overdue innovation and...
You don’t have to be environmentally minded to hate throwing away stuff. Common sense suggests that discarding phones...
Published on 28 Nov, 2021
Richard Rusczyk’s Worldwide Math Camp
If you have passion, purpose and the courage to walk down the path less trodden, the internet gives you ways to the...
Short Read
Published on 21 Nov, 2021
In praise of my favourite athlete – the amateur
Some of us are fortunate enough to continue playing amateur sport well into our 40s and can relate to this delectable...
Published on 21 Nov, 2021
How to Stop Caring What Other People Think of You
Arthur Brooks is a Harvard professor on leadership and also hosts a podcast series titled How to Build a Happy...
Published on 21 Nov, 2021
GE and the Belief in Management Magic
At Marcellus, we look for three characteristics in companies before investing – clean promoters (being fair to...
Long Read
Published on 21 Nov, 2021
The Exponential Age Will Transform Economics Forever
Albert Einstein is often attributed with the quote of compounding being the eighth wonder of the world. Wonder, because...
Published on 21 Nov, 2021
Experts from a world that no longer exists
Whilst growing up, almost all of us learn from books written by the previous generation. In fact, in India it is...
Published on 21 Nov, 2021
How Arvind Lal built a single lab into India’s...
We have a significant stake (by our standards) in Dr Lal Pathlabs and have as a result had the good fortune to meet the...
Short Read
Published on 14 Nov, 2021
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...
Published on 14 Nov, 2021
A look at the metaverse through four lenses of a met...
We have featured pieces on the Metaverse in recent months, about what they mean by it and what implications it may have...
Published on 14 Nov, 2021
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...
Long Read
Published on 14 Nov, 2021
Sequoia’s Crucible Moment – Podcast with partner Roe...
The venture capital industry has never had it better. The last three decades has seen technology led disruption of long...
Published on 14 Nov, 2021
Crook, TRP-hunter, idiot, clown: How Indian journali...
The world over, journalism has lost the prestige that it used to enjoy in the previous century. Whilst in this piece...
Published on 14 Nov, 2021
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...
Short Read
Published on 07 Nov, 2021
FILE NOT FOUND – A generation that grew up wit...
Author: Monica Chin Source: The Verge...
Published on 07 Nov, 2021
The dawn of the quantitative tightening era?
Authors: Robin Wigglesworth Source: The Financial...
Published on 07 Nov, 2021
Hot Streaks in Your Career Don’t Happen by Accident
Author: Derek Thompson Source: The Atlantic...
Long Read
Published on 07 Nov, 2021
The Same Stories, Again and Again
Author: Morgan Housel Source: Collaborative Fund...
Published on 07 Nov, 2021
Cult figure of investing one of few to grasp early p...
Authors: Miles Johnson and Jamie PowellSources: Financial Times...
Oct 2021
- Week 5
- Week 4
- Week 3
- Week 2
- Week 1
Short Read
Published on 31 Oct, 2021
The most brilliant bookshops in the world
Good old physical bookshops have been shutting down across the world, partly driven by the convenience of buying online...
Published on 31 Oct, 2021
Cadbury ad shows how the ad industry is becoming AI-...
Cadbury ads have always invoked emotions of warmth with a social messaging underpinning it, especially the ones around...
Published on 31 Oct, 2021
How the Supply Chain Broke, and Why It Won’t Be Fixe...
With the recent FOMC minutes revealing that the Fed is ready to taper, thanks to the persistently high inflation much...
Long Read
Published on 31 Oct, 2021
The Korean Invasion – Can Cultural Exports Giv...
The Korean TV series, Squid Game is already the world’s most popular TV series with Netflix making almost a billion...
Published on 31 Oct, 2021
The Art of (Not) Selling
Whilst there are many privileges to being a Marcellus employee, one of the most tragic aspects of our job is watching...
Published on 31 Oct, 2021
‘The Custodian of Trust: A Banker’s Memoir’
The former Chairman of SBI, Rajnish Kumar, has written an interesting book recounting the highlights from his stint at...
Short Read
Published on 24 Oct, 2021
Air India and the Maharajah Man
The sale of Air India (back) to the Tatas is likely to go down as an epic moment in India’s political economic...
Published on 24 Oct, 2021
time millionaires: meet the people pursuing the plea...
The eternal debate of work vs leisure has attained greater proportions during the pandemic. The 3L&3S has featured...
Published on 24 Oct, 2021
Bill Miller 3Q 2021 Market Letter
As it is, the first question in a client pitch is our thoughts on how the market is likely to pan out in the near...
Long Read
Published on 24 Oct, 2021
Intel slipped—and its future now depends on making e...
The semiconductor industry, which touches every aspect of our lives now – from cars to electronic gadgets to our...
Published on 24 Oct, 2021
Review of ‘The Brains and Brawn Company: How Leading...
As more consumer internet IPOs head for the Indian stockmarket, we are asked by Marcellus’ clients whether our...
Published on 24 Oct, 2021
Secret of Dhoni’s success: Simplicity and clarity
As one of our heroes, Rahul Dravid, heads towards high office in Indian cricket, we highlight this superb piece from...
Short Read
Published on 17 Oct, 2021
Don’t Wish for Happiness. Work for It.
Arthur Brooks writes this wonderful column for The Atlantic about “How to Build a Life” – in this piece he argues...
Published on 17 Oct, 2021
All about setting up a living trust
Some of our clients who manage their own investments rather than with the help of a wealth manager seem to struggle...
Published on 17 Oct, 2021
Shein exemplifies a new style of Chinese multinational
Robert Siegel’s new book “The Brains and Brawn company” talks about how neither the new age all-digital company...
Long Read
Published on 17 Oct, 2021
The Triumph and Terror of Wang Huning
As we continue to peel the layers of the Chinese onion, we found this brilliant piece which attempts to answer what is...
Published on 17 Oct, 2021
How to write with style
At Marcellus we care deeply about thinking, talking and writing clearly. Not only does it allow us to communicate...
Published on 17 Oct, 2021
Electric vehicles: the revolution is finally here
The last 12 months has seen an extraordinary surge in demand for EVs – not just expensive EVs like Tesla but also...
Short Read
Published on 10 Oct, 2021
Valuing stocks: why investors should look harder at ...
Valuing stocks is often a tricky exercise which is why most market participants take the easy route of using multiples,...
Published on 10 Oct, 2021
How ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ Started a...
At last month’s Emmy awards, Netflix won a whopping 44 awards compared to HBO’s 19 showing how streaming TV had...
Published on 10 Oct, 2021
Xi’s Changing Plan
Plenty has been written and plenty more will be written about the Chinese unravelling starting with the failed Ant...
Long Read
Published on 10 Oct, 2021
How a stellar team of economists transformed India i...
Often economists are criticised for lacking a practical approach to policy making given the reality of the political...
Published on 10 Oct, 2021
12 Things Lee Kuan Yew Taught Me About the World
One of the things that we have learnt from our guru Sir John Kay is that if we are to improve the quality of our...
Published on 10 Oct, 2021
NFRA’s R Sridharan: Loose drafting of law and muddle...
As we learnt from our recent trip to New Delhi, there is a massive punch-up playing out at present for control of the...
Short Read
Published on 03 Oct, 2021
Lennon a Marxist or capitalist?
The best part of publishing 3L&3S is the reciprocal content we get from our readers. Last week’s edition featured...
Published on 03 Oct, 2021
Jeremy Grantham warns of an epic market bubble, bemo...
Jeremy Grantham, the co-founder and chief investment strategist of the iconic fund management firm Grantham, Mayo &...
Published on 03 Oct, 2021
Dangerous Feelings
The title is counter intuitively apt in the sense it refers to seemingly innocuous behaviour of ours that can be quite...
Long Read
Published on 03 Oct, 2021
How do batters train for the demands of T20?
Twenty20 cricket is often ridiculed by the purists as a jamboree of sorts. This very well researched piece argues...
Published on 03 Oct, 2021
How the World Bank scandal is linked to Xi Jinping r...
As each week brings incremental news of the ongoing unravelling of same facet of China – either its overleveraged...
Published on 03 Oct, 2021
The real stakes of Apple’s battle over remote work
The debate taking place between Apple and its employees – with regards to returning to office work in the post-Covid...