In 1961, Davis & Rock filed their certificate for a limited partnership. The market, vexed with corporations ousting founders & legacy capital providers competing to be ‘the richest corpse in the cemetery’ needed novelty in financing the technology revolution. The rules were original: create a 100% equity structure, find unconventional…

My read list held an unprecedented author’s name for over two years, Anthony Bourdain. His essay Don’t Eat Before Reading This displays how excellently he can combine wit and vulnerability. His writing is power-packed, a justified metaphor for his obsession with big knives not being sharp enough. …

Kondratiev waves The Kondratiev theory held that capitalist economies move in long cycles, typically 50–60 years. The upswings occur during periods of technological innovation and abundant investments followed by downswings as new investments dry up and old ones lose value. The brainchild of Nikolai Kondratiev, this theory is pooh-poohed by…

Part 1 Adam Grant and fruitful debates with a city’s top doctor (also a dear friend) have inspired this writing. ‘Who you are should be a question of what you value, not what you believe. Values are your core principles in life — they might be excellence and generosity, freedom…

The first hedge-fund manager, Alfred Winslow Jones, took a job on a tramp steamer, studied at the Marxist Workers School in Berlin, and ran secret missions for a clandestine anti-Nazi group called the Leninist Organization. It was only at the advanced age of forty-eight that Jones raked together $100,000 to…

There’s a poem I love by Tomas Tranströmer called “The Blue House”. It has been a constant hum in my ears since I read it. I think of it so ceaselessly because of all the irrevocable choices that we have to make. To marry or not? To have kids or…

Two years ago, a loss so profound happened, that the fabric of my existence became tangled. Each thread I held bare, fragile and naked. Day 1: A pleasant day. A big family union. Vibrating laughter. A closed door. I peep in to see my grandfather asleep. Space beside him. I…

What are junk bonds? Also known as high-yield bonds, it’s debt that is rated below investment grade by the rating agencies. Why buy them? They behave like equity or shares, higher the risk hence higher the return. A must-know is who propelled them into being. It’s Michael Milken. In the…

On April 11 of 1945, Elie Wiesel, 16 and orphaned in the regime, stood liberated from the Buchenwald concentration camp by the U.S Third Army. In his 1999 speech, hosted by then-President Bill Clinton and First lady Hillary Clinton, he recalls the rage in the eyes of the soldiers who…