Side Notes by Zerodha Varsity

Five Gulf countries - Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the UAE - used the Indian rupee as a legal tender until the late 1950s and early 1960s. But it became a problem for India. So the RBI introduced the Gulf Rupee, a special edition of the rupee that could be used only in those five countries and not India. But why is it not in circulation today?

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

A semiconductor is a small card or chip inside your phone, laptop, smartwatch, or other digital device. That small chip has a value chain that spans thousands of players across many countries. Semiconductors are also seen as a tool of geopolitical influence, therefore, many countries have been rushing to become part of the semiconductor value chain.

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

The US extracts oil trapped in hardened shale rocks. The technology used in drilling through shale rocks and extracting oil is difficult and expensive. America's peak capitalism helped make it cheaper and made the US the world's largest oil producer.

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

Petrol, diesel, natural gas, fertilizers, plastics, rubber, detergents, and fragrances all have origins in crude oil (hydrocarbon) extraction. Crude oil runs deep in our daily lives, so it is understandable that crude oil prices are a major influence on the inflation rate. This episode traverses the entire crude oil value chain and more.

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

Unlike most companies that aim for maximum capacity utilization, Zara deliberately operates below full capacity and is even willing to ship half-empty trucks or containers. The less-than-optimal capacity utilization means that Zara cannot always offer the lowest prices, but they are competitive enough. Rivals can only scramble to match Zara's agility.

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

LTCM  had four co-founders - Myron Scholes and Robert Merton, who were famous for developing the Black-Scholes-Merton model of deriving option prices, and later also went on to win a Nobel Prize; David Mullins Jr., who served as the Vice Chairman of the US Fed from 1991 to 1994; and John Meriwether, who headed Salomon Brother's bond trading desk when it was caught in a bond auction scandal. After a few years of strong returns, LTCM quickly lost those returns and much more.

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

Bradley Birkenfeld was an American banker working for UBS in Switzerland. He blew the whistle on how UBS enabled American clients to skirt the tax laws. The investigation that followed forced Switzerland to break its decades-old banking secrecy code to let UBS share client data with the US authorities.

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

Around the 1990s, Yasuo Hamanaka of Sumitomo Corporation came to control 5% of the world's copper. He used various unscrupulous means, such as fake trades, forged documents, and hoarding, to manipulate global copper prices. Then, a twist came with the resurgence of copper mining in China. Sumitomo lost USD 2.6 billion when the scam was uncovered in 1996. 

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

Salomon Brothers was one of the largest investment banks in the US in the 1970s and 1980s. It was the first bank to sell mortgage-backed securities. The head of the government bond trading desk at Salomon had figured out a way to scam the Fed's treasury auctions. When the scam surfaced, the Fed and the SEC were both determined to bring down Salomon, but Warren Buffett stepped in to help find the culprit and keep the bank running.

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

Bernie Madoff ran an investment management firm that was not open to all - it was an invite-only club. That is what made it aspirational. Many investors saw it as a sign of status if they got to invest with Madoff. But no one knew that Madoff was not investing their money; he was just running a Ponzi scheme that lost investors a massive $65 billion.

How did he pull it off?

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.