Markets with Bertie: The grand wedding, manufacturing fund and Sam Altman

Bertie is quite miffed that he was not invited to the grand wedding. He was one of the first subscribers to sign on for the SIM card that offered free internet and you didn’t hear a peep out of the man even when his phone bill saw a hefty hike. An invite would have been a just reward for his unstinting subscriber loyalty but that wasn’t to be. Bertie had been protesting this slight by not liking any wedding pictures on Instagram but when the CFO of a Malaysian bank in faraway Kuala Lumpur gushed about how opulent the whole affair looked, Bertie realised he is in a global minority.

The subject of the grand wedding came up again when Bertie was having lunch with a Sri Lankan entrepreneur who inter alia owns luxury resorts along the country’s scenic coastline. “What will it take for us to host a wedding like that?” he asked earnestly. “Imagine the extravaganza, the billionaire guests, the spends, the employment, the lift to our GDP. We will pay back the IMF in one go!”. Bertie responded with a watery smile and quietly pulled out his phone to like a picture of the newly wedded couple.

What are we manufacturing?

Back in the Bay, Bertie caught up with an old friend. The normally morose chap had been a ‘career analyst’, a buy side euphemism for someone who never made it to fund manager. Automobiles and ancillaries were his area of expertise and for over two decades he had analysed just that for a large mutual fund. Many an evening had been drowned in malt with the gent complaining about the ossified hierarchy of his organisation that blockaded the rise of analysts to the coveted title of fund manager. But the man was upbeat today. He had finally ascended to the post of fund manager for their newly launched Manufacturing Fund. Bertie had a quizzical expression.

“Manufacturing fund?” he asked “What in the name of …” The analyst turned fund manager did not let him finish. “Have you been sleeping Bert? Thematic funds are the rage. Everyone is launching a Manufacturing fund.” Bertie was still confused but did not press the matter.

Back in office, he called up his favourite equity strategist who informed him that five manufacturing funds had been launched in last six months. “But you know the fun part?” he said in a low voice. “For years now, India’s manufacturing share of GDP has gone absolutely nowhere. Ditto our manufactured exports.” Bertie was now waiting for the punchline and he wasn’t disappointed. “We are manufacturing more manufacturing funds than actually manufacturing,” the strategist guffawed.

Ambassadors Altman and Huang

Recently, Bertie attended an investor conference where new-age tech companies were presenting. Having been around long enough to know how companies jump onto the latest bandwagon, Bertie expected the usual share of charlatans and impostors. But even he was surprised when a staid power utility company turned up at the conference and displayed a picture of Sam Altman on the opening slide of their investor deck.

The pitch was - ‘AI needs powerful data centres that guzzle gigawatts of power that we produce’. For good measure, they also had a picture of Jensen Huang holding the latest chip from Nvidia. Without Sam and Jensen’s knowledge, they had been co-opted as the brand ambassadors of boring. Bertie quietly slipped out, thinking that he had now seen it all.

(Bertie is a Mumbai-based fund manager whose compliance department wishes him to cough twice before speaking and then decide not to say it after all.)

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