Mandar Silam

Partner @compcircle. Passionate about food, sports, markets and politics.. not necessarily in the same order. Views are personal

[Mandar Silam @mandarsilam]

@ShoneeKapoor On the onset thank you for bringing facts like this to light and fighting for men’s rights. Just a small correction for the image, Its Karnataka and not telangana.

[Mandar Silam @mandarsilam]

@ShoneeKapoor @Nikhil_Dwivedi Will watch this for sure

[Mandar Silam @mandarsilam]

@aditya_kondawar Thane - Mumbai bhi karo….

[Mandar Silam @mandarsilam]

Crude gets all the headlines. The deeper problem is that India’s investment thesis is cracking.
Net FDI has been negative for four consecutive months. The spread between US 10-year yields at 4.6% and Indian risk assets has compressed to a point where the math simply does not work for foreign capital anymore.
The window to act was six months ago when the Hormuz risk was visible and FII selling was accelerating.
Rs.97 is the price of wait and watch.

[Mandar Silam @mandarsilam]

When even 60-year-olds who’ve never traded before are maxing out margin and taking bank loans for leverage….that’s not FOMO, that’s the top screaming in your face. History is littered with these moments.

[Roger @rdd147]

Koreans have now maxed out margin on KOSPI and are directly going to banks for loans. People that are 60 have never owned trading accounts and now it’s the fastest growing age group entering to buy leveraged semiconductors. Just one article of many describing the madness.

$soxx $dram

https://t.co/Y5x7G86uOr

[Mandar Silam @mandarsilam]

https://t.co/6QYfRXFqaT

[Mandar Silam @mandarsilam]

Couldn’t agree more.
The gold monetisation angle is the most underused lever in Indian policy right now.
One number that should make every policymaker uncomfortable.
Indian households hold 34,600 tonnes of gold worth $3.8 trillion. Nearly 90% of India’s GDP. Sitting idle. India’s annual crude import bill is $174 billion.
Mobilise just 5% of that gold and you have covered the entire crude import bill for the year.
Previous monetisation schemes failed because they asked people to melt ancestral jewellery. Nobody does that. The fix is a sovereign-backed deposit structure with real interest and zero questions asked up to ₹5 lakh.
Your four steps are bang on.
Energy security and gold mobilisation are the same policy. We just haven’t connected them yet.

[Gurmeet Chadha @connectgurmeet]

Gold duty hiked ✔️
fuel price hiked ✔️ ( more reqd)

4 more steps needed
-launch gold monetisation scheme. gold upto 5 lac CNA be deposited in banks & some interest to be given(amnesty)
-easy KYC for NRIs.. open bank & Demat AC in India through Video KYC
- FPIs to pay tax on residency
-reduce cost of investing in India

[Mandar Silam @mandarsilam]

The harder question is what comes after.
India spends $174.9 billion on crude every year. 22% of everything we import. One war near the Gulf and we end up here. Every time.
The hike was inevitable. The vulnerability that made it inevitable was a choice we kept postponing.

[Mandar Silam @mandarsilam]

Petrol and diesel just got more expensive. For the first time in four years.
This didn’t happen because of one bad day. It happened because 1,400 days of bad days finally ran out of road. 🧵

[Mandar Silam @mandarsilam]

To be fair. This was unavoidable.
IOC, BPCL and HPCL were losing ₹1,600 crore every single day. Brent above $106. Rupee at 95.77. The math broke down months ago. Holding longer would have pushed the OMCs toward insolvency. That would have been far worse.
The hike was the right call. Late, but right.

[Mandar Silam @mandarsilam]

India just more than doubled the import duty on gold and silver. From 6% to 15%. Effective today.
At current prices that adds roughly ₹13,900 to every 10 grams of gold you buy. Silver gets hit by about ₹25,000 per kilogram.
That is not a small number. That lands directly in the pocket of every Indian buying jewellery, every family saving in gold, every trader on Zaveri Bazaar.
The government knows this. They did it anyway. And that tells you exactly how serious the forex pressure has become.
India imports almost all of its gold. Every kilogram that comes in costs dollars we need right now for crude oil. Protecting the energy bill over the gold bill is the right call even if it is a painful one.
One thing worth watching closely. Sharp duty hikes have historically pushed gold underground. Grey markets move fast when the incentives are this large. That battle will need to be fought simultaneously.
But the intent is sound. When the reserves are bleeding and the oil tap is choked, you make hard choices.
This is one of them.

[Mandar Silam @mandarsilam]

@aditya_kondawar Keep on growing brother

[Mandar Silam @mandarsilam]

I completely agree Vijay. Emergency buying is a painkiller not a cure.
The real fix needs three things to happen together. SPR capacity at 90 days minimum, we’re barely at half that. A serious renewable push so we’re less crude dependent as a country. And import route diversification done before the next crisis, not scrambling during one.
None of that fits in a budget cycle. Which is why the current solution, however well intentioned, is a band-aid on an architecture problem we’ve been postponing for decades.

[Mandar Silam @mandarsilam]

Everyone’s talking about Hormuz being blocked.
Nobody’s asking what India quietly did after that. Or what’s now happening to that plan.
Eight chapters. One story we all should be aware of. 🧵

[Mandar Silam @mandarsilam]

Chapter 8 — मित्रो वाला संदेश
(The Real Message)
So when Modiji asked 1.4 billion people to work from home, cancel foreign trips, take the metro and hold off on gold purchases, a lot of people saw political messaging.
Maybe there is some of that. The timing after state election results is hard to ignore.
But strip that away and what remains is a government that knows its Plan A is choked, its Plan B is bleeding and its Plan C cannot scale fast enough. Every car that stays home is a few more barrels saved. Every trip not taken is the buffer lasting one more day.
That is not a motivational speech. That is a country buying itself time.

Sources: Reuters · CBS News · AXSMarine · IEA · Kpler · CNBC · https://t.co/youTCKan7w

[Mandar Silam @mandarsilam]

Chapter 7 — Day 70
Here is the buffer reality.
India holds roughly 100 million barrels in strategic reserves at Mangalore, Padur and Vizag. That was built to cover about 40 to 45 days of Hormuz linked imports.
Today is Day 70 of the closure.
That number deserves a quiet moment.