Side Notes by Zerodha Varsity

Mar 24 2025 44 ep. 5 mins 8
Side Notes by Zerodha Varsity Podcast artwork

Byte-sized lessons on investment strategy, financial metrics, business decisions, and/or market phenomena.

  Business  Education
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Ep. 44 - Reliance has equity reserves of ₹8 lakh crore! How does it use them?

Mar 24 2025 6 mins  
A company usually creates reserves from share premiums and retained earnings. However, not all reserves are liquid. Companies use reserves for various purposes. If not used well, excessive reserves held in cash could be a drag on the company's ROE. Zerodha Varsity on Social Media:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zerodhavarsity/X: https://x.com/ZerodhaVarsityYouTube: https://ww

Ep. 43 - Ryanair offers cheapest airfares and is still the most profitable

Mar 17 2025 7 mins  
Ryanair offers extremely cheap flight tickets in Europe. They sell most tickets for £15 or less, which is roughly ₹1600. You hardly ever find those fares, even in India. Indigo is said to have emulated Ryanair's business model in its early days, but not anymore. So, how does Ryanair make money? What is its business model? Zerodha Varsity on Social Media:Instagram: https://www.i

Ep. 42 - Crazy Eddie - Scams and More Scams

Mar 11 2025 9 mins  
Crazy Eddie was an electronics retailer in New York in the 1970s and 1980s. It was very famous for its catchy TV commercials but soon became infamous for the scams by its founders. This is a crazy tale of how two cousins defrauded their customers, shareholders, insurers, and the government. Zerodha Varsity on Social Media:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zerodhavarsity/X: https

Ep. 41 - Why Jio Financial Services became part of the Nifty 50 index for just 13 days?

Mar 03 2025 4 mins  
Jio Financial Services was spun off from Reliance Industries. Reliance is a part of the Nifty 50 index. Does that make JFS a de facto member of the index? JFS became part of the index for 13 days. What was the reason? Was 13 days too much or too little?You could use the same framework to understand ITC Hotels' inclusion and exclusion in the indices. Zerodha Varsity on Social Media:

Ep. 40 - Why Airlines are a tough business to crack? Indigo, Jet Airways, Kingfisher and others

Feb 27 2025 6 mins  
Warren Buffett called airlines a cursed sector. Kingfisher, Jet Airways, and Go Air in India, and many other airlines worldwide, have gone out of business. Even Indigo, India's most successful airline so far, suffered losses in four out of the last eight years. Why are airlines such a complicated business? Zerodha Varsity on Social Media:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zerodh

Ep. 39 - Friends of Reliance Vs the Bear Cartel of Kolkata

Feb 24 2025 5 mins  
A Kolkata-based group of brokers, often called the bear cartel, was shorting Reliance stock. As the stock was getting hammered, Mr. Dhirubhai Ambani apparently sought help from a group of NRIs to steady the stock price. The tale is dramatic and typical of the time when it happened. Zerodha Varsity on Social Media:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zerodhavarsity/X: https://x.com/

Ep. 38 - Why Hong Kong lets private banks print its currency?

Feb 20 2025 5 mins  
Hong Kong's central bank does not print its currency. Instead, three private banks are entrusted to print Hong Kong Dollars. This arrangement is as good as handing over the monetary policy to private players. It seems strange, but there is a British-era reason behind it. And guess what? Currency pegging has also worked well in this arrangement! Zerodha Varsity on Social Media:Insta

Ep. 37 - How Harshad Mehta Scam led to many reforms in the Indian markets?

Feb 17 2025 5 mins  
The Harshad Mehta scam of 1992 exposed massive loopholes in India’s banking and stock market systems, leading to a series of crucial financial reforms. Faster adoption of digital banking and dematerialized shares, stricter regulatory oversight, and modernized stock exchanges were all outcomes of the reforms meant to prevent such frauds in the future. Zerodha Varsity on Social Med

Ep. 36 - Why mutual funds were suddenly underperforming in 2019?

Feb 13 2025 5 mins  
A SEBI rule in 2019 mandated mutual funds to change how they benchmarked their performance to an index. An understanding of price return (PR) and total return (TR) indices explains how the reported outperformance of mutual funds vanished. Zerodha Varsity on Social Media:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zerodhavarsity/X: https://x.com/ZerodhaVarsityYouTube: https://www.youtube.c

Ep. 35 - Leverage, ROE, and ROI - Margin Trading and Businesses

Feb 10 2025 4 mins  
Borrowings can amplify your profits as well as losses. The profits earned on borrowed money add to earnings, but losses eat into the equity capital. Interest payments can further hurt equity. It seems like a risk-return dilemma!