What We're Reading #8
On Lazy journalism, Soviet Era R&D & BYD's dominance
Hi folks, hope you’ve had a great week!
Our team at Markets is always reading, often much more than what might be considered healthy. So, we thought it would be nice to have an outlet to put out what we’re reading that isn’t part of our normal cycle of content.
So we’ve started “What We’re Reading”, where every weekend, our team outlines the interesting articles — even books — that put our brains in seventh gear (if that even exists). This edition straddles World War II history, economic history, oil, technology, Japanese rail, private credit, and unfortunately, geopolitics. In short, business as usual.
We also host a book club every Saturday, that we talk about at the end. If you’d like to read with us, please feel free to join!
We’d also love to know what has piqued your interest, too! Please feel free to let us know in the comments.
What Kashish is reading
On “CEO said this” journalism (link)
At Markets by Zerodha, we’re always on the lookout for interesting things to cover and talk about. A large part of that discovery process comes from reading journalist reports, essays, and everything in between that helps us figure out what actually matters.
Which is why it’s a bit frustrating how often that pipeline disappoints.
This piece by an independent journalist is a sharp critique of a very specific genre of reporting what he calls “CEO said this” journalism. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a CEO says something, and that statement gets reported almost verbatim, stripped of context, critique, or even basic skepticism. No interrogation of incentives, no attempt to verify, no pushback. Just transcription dressed up as reporting.
It’s not a new idea. But the way the author lays it out makes you realise just how pervasive, and harmful, this style of journalism is. When people whose job is to question power instead end up amplifying it, you’re left with something that’s not just lazy, but quietly dishonest.
Which is why coming across pieces like this matters. Not because they introduce something radically new, but because they force a reset in how we pick stories, how we frame them, and how much effort we put into actually doing justice to the subject.
At the end of the day, that’s really what we’re trying to do at Markets. Stay honest, stay curious, and most importantly, stay sane in how we approach the stories we tell.
What Manie is reading
Arthur J Alexander, R&D in Soviet Aviation (link)
I’d seen a tweet somewhere earlier this week that even in the wieldy, heavily centrally-planned economy of the Soviet Union, competition existed in certain sectors.
I suppose you’re thinking what I thought: competition is a fundamental feature of capitalism, so how did it end up guiding any part of a state socialist system? Well, in aviation and space, two of the Soviet Union’s shining stars, there was competition between state organizations that did work independently.
From that tweet, I landed myself on this report from the US-based RAND corporation, published all the way in 1970, delves deeper into how R&D in Soviet aviation worked. Interestingly, the Soviet aircraft industry was far more fragmented in market structure than the US!
To be sure, the USSR’s political incentives inevitably did hurt the way the industry worked. But it was really fascinating to see many of the methods adopted by market-based systems also be applied here. It’s one of those reads that really gets into the nitty-gritties of real-world business, instead of reducing things to capitalism and socialism.
Wall Street Journal, How China’s BYD Overtook Tesla (link)
I wrote the BYD story from earlier in the week. And honestly, I repeatedly found myself in utter disbelief at its story.
There’s an incredible podcast on WSJ from 2024 on the business history of BYD. I’ll just be highlighting tidbits from the transcript for you to judge what I mean:
“She [Stella Li, currently Executive VP of BYD] just went out there, even though she had no connection, she knew nobody, she didn’t know how business was done in these foreign markets. So people who knew her from those days told us that she would get on a cab and ask the cab driver where he could buy a small appliance using this kind of battery that BYD was making. And she would be brought to the market, and from the market, she would then talk to the sellers and figure out who would buy up their batteries. And so very soon she was able to sell all the batteries that she brought with her from China.”
Or how about:
“So their first car looked a lot like a Toyota Corolla. It didn’t say that directly that he was copying from Toyota, but he did say that Toyota was the top of the auto industry at the time, and he wanted to learn from the best one.”
“People would get it simply because it was cheaper and it could somehow roll on the road on four wheels. And so around that time, car maintenance shops and garages, they would offer to swap out the BYD logo for another Japanese or Korean brand logo on the car. It was just a thing that some people would do.”
Or the time founder Wang Chuanfu drank his own battery fluid:
“BYD’s early gas-powered cars weren’t great quality, but they did sell well and soon the company caught the eye of a major investor, Warren Buffett. In 2008, Buffett sent an executive on his team named David Sokol to a BYD factory in China. When Sokol arrived, Wang and Li pitched him on how BYD was planning to one day expand into EVs. And then, according to a person familiar with the visit, Wang did something surprising.”
“It was during this visit that Wang Chuanfu tried to convince David Sokol how safe his batteries were, and so he poured a glass of this battery fluid that typically would go into a battery cell and drank from it to show him how safe it was.”
I’ll stop right here, and leave you to check out the rest of the podcast yourself. It’s…electric.
We have a book club!
This feels like a great segue to remind you of something that we’re pretty bad at advertising: our book club.
So here’s an image of our fairly-impressive book collection to attract you. Yes, they’re not just for show, and we do read them, alongside some coffee/tea and sandwiches.
The Markets book club has been running for nearly a year. We have some avowed loyalists who come almost every weekend and nerd about their readings with us. But really, it’s become a great spot for many of us to talk to each other - even forge new friendships - without being distracted by any screen. It’s this in-person community that we’re really proud of building.
So, we’d love for you to join us! We host the book club every Saturday, 10:30-1 pm, at the Ditto office in JP Nagar. Unfortunately, this location is fixed - we understand JP Nagar may be far for some. But this is the only place where we can host it smoothly. And we don’t host sessions online, either.
If you’d like to attend the book club, please keep the above in mind, and please reach out to: pranav.manie@zerodha.com!