If you have watched Scam 1992 or The Big Bull, you probably know about the Harshad Mehta scam.

But do you know the reforms that India saw because of that scam?

Here’s a quick thread🧵👇(1/8) Dematerialization.

Mehta would get multiple loans against the same set of shares from multiple banks. He could do that because shares were traded in physical form at that time.

Dematerialization has eliminated the scope for pledging the same share with multiple lenders. (2/8)

Nassim Nicholas Taleb introduced The Lindy Effect in his book Antifragile in 2012.

The theory suggests that the chances of a new tech/idea to survive increase as their age increases.

With indices down ~20%, now might be a good time to study the Lindy Effect on the markets. 👇🧵(1/11) We wanted to see if there was any connection between a business's age and its likelihood of survival.

If the Lindy Effect works on stocks, older stocks are more likely to emerge fine from the current downturn. Here’s how we went about it and what we found. (2/11)

Warren Buffett has completed 60 years of running Berkshire Hathaway. As usual, he wrote an annual letter to Berkshire’s shareholders, and it is filled with investment nuggets and wisdom.

We spent the weekend deep-diving into it; here👇 is everything you need to know.🧵 (1/15) Buffett starts by discussing mistakes but doesn’t give details. In the past, he has listed his mistakes as and when they happened.

But he also mentions “pleasant surprises in both the potential of the business as well as the ability and fidelity of the manager.” (2/15)

Moats can be of different types.

Here’s a thread🧵 of a few Indian businesses with different types of moats. (1/6) Brand Moat: Nestle Maggi enjoys unbeaten brand loyalty in instant noodles.

Remember how it was banned in 2015 due to a health scare? Yet, when it was re-launched only months later, it reclaimed 60%+ market share very quickly. Maggi’s taste and brand loyalty are its moat. (2/6)

Budget 2025: When less is more.

Can someone earning ₹12.75 lakh take home more than someone earning ₹13 lakh?

Yes—at least to some extent.

Here’s a thread 🧵 Take ‘A’, who earns an annual salary of 12.75 lakhs. ‘A’ gets a standard deduction (SD) of 75,000, making the taxable income Rs 12 lakh.

Tax liability after Budget 2025: Nil

Here, ‘A’ is getting a full rebate on tax liability as the income is 12 lakhs or less.

Union Budget 2025: A big relief for the middle class.

No income tax till 12 lakhs under the new tax regime.

You can save more than a lakh based on your income level.

How much will you save in taxes? Read this thread🧵👇. (1/6) You have zero tax liability for up to 12 lakhs, but it doesn't mean income up to 12 lakhs is tax-exempt.

If you earn 12 lakhs or less, you will get a full rebate on your tax outgo.

If you earn over 12 lakhs, all your income above 4 lakhs is taxable.

A few examples👇. (2/6)

The Nasdaq, Nvidia, Microsoft, and other prominent AI stocks fell on Friday.

A hedge-fund-backed AI lab has emerged in China that could give them all a run for their money.
You guessed it right. It is DeepSeek.

What’s so special about it? (1/7)🧵 DeepSeek makes LLM models just like OpenAI, Google, and Meta.

What has stunned the US Big Tech is that its latest LLM model, the DeepSeek-V3, was built for less than $6 million😮.

How much is OpenAI spending on its LLM models? $5 billion a year! (2/7)

Do you know the difference between a luxury car and a brick?

You would pay a premium for a Rolls Royce but not for bricks🧱.

Premium pricing enables businesses to make more profits, but what can make bricks profitable? (1/7)🧵 Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway acquired Acme Bricks in 2000.

Acme was not a Chanel or Rolls Royce that could command hefty prices. These luxury brands can hike prices, and customers will still buy them.

But brickmakers can’t do that. So, what was Acme’s edge? (2/7)

Are you waiting for RBI rate cuts to buy a home? Whether you are a potential home loan borrower or already have one, you need to know these relatively new rules on EMIs that could save you significant amounts in interest.

Especially after RBI intervened in 2023, giving more flexibility to borrowers.

Here’s a thread🧵 These rules are for floating-rate personal loans.

Interest rates on floating-rate loans depend on benchmark rates (like RBI's repo rate). For many years, when interest rates went up, the EMI amount stayed the same, but the loan tenure increased.

It’s a relief when rates fall but tough when they rise — but that’s part of the deal.

Say you made 20% each on large-cap and SME stocks—the same returns. But would you treat them the same?

We bet your answer is a big no—and rightly so! The risk taken for each is worlds apart.

Now think of mutual funds: schemes within the same category can deliver similar returns but would have taken different risks to achieve them. How do you compare?

Risk-adjusted returns! As per SEBI's new circular, it is now mandatory for mutual funds to share it publicly.
A thread 🧵 SEBI believes the ‘Risk-Adjusted Return’ (RAR) gives a holistic picture of a mutual fund's performance. It shows how much return a scheme generates for each unit of risk taken.

That’s why all equity funds must display RARs to be shown as an ‘information ratio.’

Coldplay will do 5 concerts in India.

Concerts usually spur local economic activity. Maybe that’s why Argentina hosted 10 Coldplay gigs in 2022.

But the Coldplay concert did something else in Argentina - it introduced the ‘Coldplay Dollars.’

What are Coldplay Dollars?🧵(1/10) Let’s say a ticket to a Coldplay concert in Argentina was USD 100.

1 USD was roughly 170 Pesos at that time.

So, Argentines had to basically pay 17000 pesos. However, they were charged 22100 pesos😮.

That’s 30% higher. Why so?
(2/10)

Cultures change, and traditions fade away, but the millennia-old Kumbh Mela soldiers on.

The government has spent 7000 crores to host 40 crore people in a tent city with 1.6 lakh tents on the banks of the Ganga for the Mela!

Check out the Mela’s mind-boggling economics!🧵(1/7) The scale is unprecedented.

The Kumbh Mela started on 13th Jan 2025. The 40-day Mela is expected to draw 40 crore people to Prayagraj, a city of 60 lakh residents.

The tent city for the Mela is spread over 40,000 hectares, almost as big as 7,500 football fields🤯. (2/7)

Imagine this situation: A joint demat or mutual fund account is opened. Say one of the joint account holders passes away. Who gets the share of the deceased account holder? - The legal heirs of the deceased holder or the surviving joint account holder?

SEBI recently clarified this in its circular. It also addressed another important matter: Can a nominee access the funds of an investor who becomes incapacitated?

A thread 🧵 Earlier, there were disputes in the case of joint account holding —legal heirs claimed they had a right over the deceased holder’s share.

In 2021, SEBI stepped in and made things clear: the surviving joint holders would get possession of the assets.

Now, SEBI again highlights the same rule in its new circular, ending the confusion once and for all! This applies to mutual fund units as well.

It is the results season again.

Companies will start releasing their Q3 results for the current financial year.

The information they share could be overwhelming.

But you could look at these five things to get a fair idea of how a company did. 🧵(1/8) Revenue growth:
Check the percentage growth in revenues. Also, look for factors that contribute to growth.
🔹Volume growth for FMCG
🔹Revenue per user for telecom
🔹Revenue per room for hotels
🔹Revenue per seat for airlines
🔹Order book size for IT and infra companies (2/8)

Last year, the US stock market index—the S&P 500—delivered a 28.9% return. But an Indian investor would have made 33.09% on the same index.

If ‘Rupee depreciation’ was your first thought, you're correct. In the last one year, the Rupee depreciated by about 3.19% against the Dollar and stood at 85.8 as of Jan 6, 2025.

Here's a refresher on how exchange rates affect your returns from foreign investments and what happened in the past 🧵 What is the impact of rupee depreciation?

- Rupee depreciation means relative dollar appreciation.

- So, your investment in dollars is worth more when converted to Rupees.

Mirae Asset S&P 500 Top 50 ETF: 20%
Motilal Oswal NASDAQ 100 ETF: 20%
Mirae Asset NYSE FANG+ ETF: 19.4%
Motilal Oswal NASDAQ Q 50 ETF: 19.4%

No, these are not returns. They represent the premium at which those US-focused ETFs are traded in India compared to their fair value (NAV).

For instance, here is the Mirae Asset NYSE FANG + ETF plot of price vs NAV as of Jan 2, 2025. You would have noticed optimism in the US markets after Donald Trump won the Presidential election in November 2024.

Since Trump’s victory, Indian investors have also shown increased interest in taking exposure to the US markets.

It takes over 10 years to repay the entire credit card liability if you just pay the ‘minimum amount due’ every month. This is on a credit card outstanding of
Rs 50,000 at an interest rate of 36% per annum.

You must know how credit card dues work🧵 But before that, here's a recent Supreme Court judgment on credit card interest rates-

The background
NCDRC—The National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission—helps people who feel they have been cheated by businesses or service providers.

In 2008, NCDRC (Delhi) ruled that charging over 30% interest annually on unpaid credit card dues is “exorbitant and usurious.” It pointed out that it is an exploitation of borrowers/debtors.

Next time you go to a shop to buy popcorn, you might see the revised GST rates applied to diff types.

Plain/salted (unpackaged): 5%
Packaged popcorn: 12%
Sweetened popcorn: 18%

But popcorn means movie and movie means popcorn. Let's see the GST rates you pay for movie watching. 🎞️Movie tickets and food you purchase at theatres usually come in all-inclusive prices - “the prices are inclusive of taxes”.

Unless you check the invoice, you won’t know the breakup between the prices and the taxes you pay.

People often talk about stocks at parties and gatherings with friends and family. One of the most discussed stocks at such gatherings is usually Yes Bank🙂.

Have you ever guessed why?
(1/8) One possible reason could be that Yes Bank has one of the highest numbers of “outstanding shares” and the “maximum number of shareholders.”
(2/8)

Who sold and bought Adani shares?

Adani Group has been in bad press lately. All 7 listed Adani stocks have been hit, especially since US authorities accused the Group of bribery.

Adani Enterprises, for example, corrected by 34% before it recovered a little.
🧵(1/7) But in the recent sell-off, who sold Adani shares or, rather, who bought the Adani shares?

While it is hard to pinpoint who is selling or buying, the company's shareholding pattern combined with volume data can give some hints.

Shareholding pattern of Adani companies:
(2/7)

India’s first SM REIT IPO - The Property Share Investment Trust - is up for subscription. The PropShare Platina is the first scheme of the REIT and includes commercial office spaces in Bangalore.

But what is an SM REIT (Small and medium REIT), and what are the risks? 🧵 First things first🏙️

REITs own a pool of real estate properties, which gives investors real estate exposure without direct ownership or management.

They earn rental income and distribute it as dividends. Capital appreciation of properties increases your investment value, too.