Mint on India’s mutual fund Rs 74 trillion crore industry: “Monthly SIP inflows, which stood at ₹8,055 crore in 2019, have swelled to ₹32,087 crore as of March 2026. The number of folios has expanded from 82 million to 270 million during the same period, underscoring the depth and breadth of this retail wave. The investor boom has naturally been mirrored on the supply side. The number of asset management companies (AMCs) has crossed the 50 mark, up from 42 in 2019 with 11 more licences in the pipeline, intensifying competition in an already crowded field.”
WSJ: “Rhodium reports that once Chinese firms reach technological parity with their competitors, they take market share at breathtaking speed. The result: In 2016, Rhodium estimates, China controlled more than 50% of export volumes in 163 industries (using an international classification system). By 2024, that had risen to 315. China’s massive trade surpluses are often attributed to chronically weak domestic demand. Yet China can create demand when it wants. To nurture its drone industry, Beijing encourages numerous sectors, including agriculture, local government and tourism, to integrate drones, “complemented by public investment in enabling infrastructure, including the use of local government special bonds,” Rhodium writes.”
Deirdre McCloskey: “An equality of outcome, the brain surgeon paid at the finish line, or the tenth mile, the same as the street sweeper, certainly comports with an equality of souls…. But unfortunately in large groups the ignoring of a person’s marginal work product, and making payments according to the noble belief in the equality of human worth – in which all us monotheists and modern liberals do, I affirm yet again, fervently believe – does not work. Through gross misallocation in the short run, and the collapse of spurs to innovation in the long, such an enforced equality of outcome leads in a large group to a dismal equality of poverty, and then to tyranny. Such attempts fail every time at large scale, even when they are kindly and sincere and gentle.” [via CafeHayek]
NYTimes on Ukraine’s 35-year-old defense minister: “The future of warfare is being written in Ukraine, and Mr. [Mykhailo] Fedorov, a technology evangelist who is four months into his job, is one of its authors. In the same way that apps remade taxi services and food delivery, Mr. Fedorov believes that warfare is ripe for disruption. That, he says, means offloading the fighting as much as possible onto machines — including, someday, those that can make lethal decisions on their own. “The world needs security, and only autonomous weapons can ensure it,” Mr. Fedorov said in an interview in his office at the Ministry of Defense. “Autonomous weapons are the new nuclear weapons. Countries that possess them will be protected.””
