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71 Articles

Conviction: How We Survived Covid

This conviction is rooted in the investor’s prior research and analysis, and their well-informed assessment that the disaster has not caused irreparable harm to their portfolio companies.

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Small Caps, Overlaps and ChatGPT 

While it’s clear that conversational artificial intelligence is the new technological breakthrough everyone is talking about, using it to improve financial decisions could be tricky because there is a lot of garbage on the internet about finance and investments, that may be confusing or even detrimental if used as inputs to a learning model.

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Equity Investing: No Free Lunches

At the beginning of the new year, there is a lot of uncertainty and volatility in the economy and the financial markets. The tightening grip of higher interest rates is being felt across industries and asset classes.
 
Messages are mixed. The global economy faces recession while Indian entrepreneurs are still optimistic.

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Data Backup at the Stock Exchanges

In a talk given at IIM Bangalore a few weeks ago, the SEBI chairperson (Madhabi Puri Buch) described a very interesting development with respect to the security of stock exchange operation in India. She said that India will be the first country to provide a backup for exchange software breakdowns caused either by bugs or cyber attacks.

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Equity Investors Should Set Reasonable Expectations

With markets undoubtedly cracking over the last quarter, it is a good time to look back at the last three years and review our frame of reference for equity investing. We saw a global pandemic wreak havoc with lives and supply chains. The war in Ukraine exacerbated global trade problems and drove up commodity costs. The actions of central banks to ease monetary conditions helped create the conditions for increased inflation (which we called out in the past).

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The Thing About Independent Directors

In theory, an independent director is a guardian of minority shareholder rights. The independent director is supposed to scrutinise questionable decisions or plans made by the CEO or the executive promoter. Such decisions might go against the best interests of minority shareholders and could directly affect the value of their investment.

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Understanding Uncertainty

An important part of investing is understanding uncertainty – that we do not know what will happen. And yet, at the same time, we must remain optimistic. We must use our knowledge of our lack of knowledge to focus on the opportunities that uncertainty creates. A 2013 scientific paper (“Managerial Miscalibration”) studied forecasts made by Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) of leading companies, about the stock market.

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The PE of The Boss

According to a recent New York Times article, Bruce Springsteen’s music catalog was sold for $550 million. According to Billboard, after deducting costs of production and distribution, about 20% of revenues, the master recording and publishing catalogs earn $17 million per year.

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