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About us

Marcelo Marini is a businessman, financier, and author who writes on business, finance, and independent thinking for readers in more than 18 countries.

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“Bubbles occur because people trade overpriced assets as if there always will be a next buyer. Most of the time, they are right… eventually, they can be madly wrong.”

Marcelo Marini is a businessman, financier, and author. For more than 10 years, he has been sharing his weekly unconventional ideas on business, finance, and independent thinking with readers in over 18 countries. Learn more.

From The Independent Thinking:

About Marcelo Marini

Marcelo Marini is a businessman, financier, and author with more than two decades of experience in business operations, corporate finance, governance, and long-term value creation.

With a close understanding of the realities behind each business, Marcelo combines financial discipline, operating experience, and a long-term perspective to address complex corporate situations. His work is centered on the relationship between business performance, capital allocation, governance, and the quality of decision-making in companies.

In corporate finance, Marcelo has experience in financial statement and business-performance analysis, value creation, capital structure, financing and investment decisions, financial planning, and cash management. His approach connects the analysis of financial information with the operating drivers that determine a company’s capacity to generate sustainable value.

His professional experience also includes mergers and acquisitions, advanced valuation, restructuring, debt management, and leverage. In governance-related matters, he works with the financial dimensions of agency issues, financial distress, and complex legal conflicts, considering how incentives, capital structure, and operating performance affect companies, shareholders, and other stakeholders.

He has implemented global standards of management, quality (ISO 9001), and financial credentialing (Dun & Bradstreet) across the organizations he has led, with projects spanning Brazil, the United States, China, England, Germany, Hong Kong, and Uruguay.

Marini holds a bachelor's degree in Business Administration and an MBA in Corporate Finance from FGV, complemented by executive training at UC Berkeley in Global Supply Chain Management. He has represented institutions internationally, including as Guest Consul at the Startup Embassy in Silicon Valley and at the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington, D.C.

For over a decade, his weekly writing has reached business owners and investors across more than 18 countries—including hedge fund managers, founders, high-net-worth investors, and senior executives across industries. His work has been recommended reading by The Berkshire Beat.

Marcelo Marini - Businessman, Financier, Author. Profile Picture

Selected List of Articles

Over the years, Marcelo Marini has published strategic perspectives on business, finance, investing, technology, human behavior, and decision-making—often exploring structural developments before they became part of the mainstream conversation.

Investing, Markets & Capital Allocation

A selection of perspectives on investing, capital allocation, market behavior, risk, valuation, and the discipline required to allocate capital independently.

Business, Ownership & Value Creation

Essays examining businesses from an owner’s perspective—including operations, resilience, capital, scalability, execution, and long-term value generation.

Technology, AI & Future Sectors

Perspectives on technological shifts and emerging industries—from digitalization and artificial intelligence to semiconductors, network effects, biotechnology, gaming, and the space economy.

Digital Assets & Alternative Stores of Value

Early perspectives on Bitcoin, digital assets, gold, silver, monetary systems, and the changing infrastructure surrounding capital and value preservation.

Behavioral Finance & Decision Errors

Essays investigating how crowd behavior, narratives, incentives, emotions, and cognitive errors influence financial and entrepreneurial decisions.

Wealth, Family Business & Legacy

Perspectives extending beyond investment returns toward ownership, wealth architecture, family enterprises, continuity, and the relationship between capital and optionality.

Independent Thinking & Cognitive Discipline

At the center of the archive is a recurring question: how can people improve the quality of their thinking and make decisions without automatically defaulting to consensus, external validation, or prevailing narratives?

From the Archives

Some earlier writings are being progressively remounted from Marcelo Marini’s original Diaries into The Independent Thinking. Articles may therefore appear in Portuguese or another language. Readers can use their browser’s translation function when necessary.

Since the original Marcelo Marini’s Diary moved to Substack, The Independent Thinking has become the central archive for his continuing essays, observations, and independent perspectives.

Education

  • MBA in Corporate Finance, Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV).

  • Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration.

  • Extension training in Global Supply Chain Management, University of California, Berkeley.

  • Financial Statement Analysis and Business Performance, Saint Paul Business School

  • Advanced Equity Valuation Techniques, New York Institute of Finance (NYIF).

  • Law degree (in progress).

Publications

Over more than a decade, he has written more than 500 pieces for Factual Money and The Independent Thinking, reaching readers in more than 18 countries, including business owners, founders, institutional and private investors, hedge fund managers, high-net-worth individuals, and senior executives.

His writing has been recommended by The Berkshire Beat.

Marcelo was also mentioned in Entrepreneur’s Mindset, by Gustavo Oliveira, and cited in “The Macro-Economics of Intuition,” an article by Fabs Martins.

Additional Activities

  • Institutional representation at the Organization of American States (OAS), Washington, D.C., United States.

  • Member of the Board of Advisors, Directors and Former Vice-President of Public and Private Institutions.

  • Guest Consul at the Startup Embassy, Silicon Valley, United States.

  • Invited Speaker at TedX.

  • Ongoing writing on business, corporate finance, governance, and investment decision-making.

  • 3rd place Robotics competition - Marist schools of RS.

  • Participation in the Steve Jobs Movie by Universal Studios. San Francisco, CA.

  • Participations in The Dreamers and I, documentary by Kenji Yamamoto, Palo Alto.

OAS - Organization of American States, Washington D.C., USA (2017).

OAS - Organization of American States, Washington D.C., USA (2017).

Press Conference, China (2011)

Press Conference, China (2011)

Areas of Expertise

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