Sahil's Portfolio

spawner25 · December 30, 2024, 9:45pm

Thanks Sahil - this is helpful. I have enjoyed reading some of your posts on this forum (including this one) and they resonated with me. Investing to generate alpha requires multi-disciplinary mode of thinking. It also pays to always think backwards - why you shouldn’t invest in a business? as opposed to finding reasons to invest.

vnktshb · December 31, 2024, 5:28am

What is your current portfolio?

Mahesh_20 · January 14, 2025, 10:07pm

This was very helpful. Thanks Sahil

sahil_vi · April 3, 2025, 8:15am

Tariffs are not the end game.

We are entering a long drawn trade war which is meant to re-engineer the global economic order. I have spent the last 3 months doing nothing but studying what is happening around us.
I finally am starting to understand what is happening & why is it happening the way that it is.

First some light maths

Trade account: balance of exports & imports.

Trade deficit = Imports > Exports.
Trade surplus = Exports > Imports.
America is Trade Deficit
China is Trade surplus

Capital account: = balance of capital investments (into factories, FII, FDI, FPI etc).

Capital Deficit = I am exporting capital account investments into other nations, investing in them
Capital Surplus = I am importing capital account investments from other nations, they are investing in me.

For any country, its trade/current and capital accounts have to balance. So for any country BoP (balance of payment) identity:
Capital Account + Trade Account = 0

This is true for any country & any reserve currency. Look at in another way, whatever $ China earns by exporting good & services need to be recycled into American investments which typically ends up being US treasuries & US equity stocks.

Relationship bw Savings, Investment & trade balance.
Savings−Investment=Trade Balance

Savings = GDP - PrivateConsumption - GovernmentSpending
Investment (I) is spending on capital goods such as factories, machinery, and equipment.

So this means that a country with high Trade surplus keeps savings higher than investments which means it keeps both private & Govt consumption low.

Some important History

The current economic order was engineered at Bretton Woods agreement.

It made dollar the reserve currency of the world. Meaning everyone saves in dollars, typically US treasuries.
It established America as the consumer of last resort & thus the savings destination of last resort. They are one & the same thing since the BoP identity must hold.
As a consequence, if the world at large is net trade surplus, by identity, America has to be large trade deficit & also capital account surplus. This means that this means they inevitably need to keep fiscal deficit high & run large debt & deficit since they are where the world saves their monies.
How does CHina or Japan Or Germany run a large trade surplus? They do this by ensuring that their savings are high. How do they do this? By financial repression of labor (lower wages compared to their productivity). By financial repression of savers by keeping rates low. When interest rates are low it favors producers like manufacturing companies over savers since the savers make less money.

America expected that when China, Japan earned trade dollars, those would be recycled into american exports. And so china would not maintain large persistent surpluses. We know this because in 1985 when they saw $ strengthen 2x in 5 years & american exports became uncompetitive, they Engineered the Plaza accords primarily with Japan, Europe, South Korea which led to an orderly depreciation of $ by 2x & made American exports net competitive though in 6 years not immediately.

This was like a walk in park compared to what they need to engineer now. Why? Because these were all allies inside the American security umbrella. Just the threat of tarriffs by Uncle Sam was enough to bring everyone to the table & hash out an orderly $ depreciation.

As you can imagine, this worked well for a few years. But you know $ depreciation is like a 1 time trick. The imbalance is caused by differential savings rate. For any country:
Savings - Investment = Trade balance

Since dharti is a closed trading system this means summed over all countries.
Savings_china - Investment_china + Savings_india - Investment_india + … + Savings_usa - Investments_usa = 0

This means that any domestic policies which impact consumption, savings, investment all affect other nations of dharti. Since the underlying causal factors which is high savings rate in Japan, germany (caused by repression of investors & labor) was not addressed & since nations can make other reciprocal policies which might not seem like trade policies but are in fact trade policies, so america ended up being a trade deficit nation again in a few short years.

This has been continuing in the same way until 2024 when Trump decided to reset the Global economic order.

Why is Trump doing this & why now?

Many people try to paint him as a madman. He isnt. If you just see his economic & executive cabinet/team this is clear. Scott bessant. Howard lutnik. Elon Musk. Stephen Miran. These are not madmen.

Trump is doing this due to a few reasons:

National Security: It became clear in last several decades that America is able to start wars but not finish them. Free trade has effectively hollowed out the american military industrial complex. This is why trade has become a national security issue. Despite throwing kitchen sink at the problem Russia has convincingly outlasted outproduced & outsmarted American war machine in Ukraine. Similar outcomes in Iraq, Afghanistan & other wars have now convinced the national security establishment that they need to produce in America. But the thing about production is that you cannot just produce a few things in isolation. THis is why the emphasis on Autos. Auto producers are the ones who produce ships (notice how often JD vance references Ship building in his speeches), tanks , missiles & arms & ammunition. America understands that as things stand today it would lose in a kinetic war with China so it has a very short window of 2-5 years to rearm itself if it is to stand a chance in a future kinetic war with China (if war with china seems like a distant possibility check out Andreesen horowitz website They are a VC firm who is acting with white house to bring military production back to america).
Debt Bubble: decades of neoliberal consensus on shifting production to China. Hence, America runs consistent trade deficits. These need to be financed by Fiscal deficits financed by US treasuries which is debt. THis has created this massive debt bubble in America. The official debt they have already taken is close to 37T$ but if you include non funded liabilities which are to come in the future (social security promises they have made which they would fund in the future) then the debt is closer to 160-180T$. This is an insane amount of debt!! Never before has america run a debt of 120% of GDP in a non war environment.
Imperial Overstretch: Never before in history of all empires has an empire turned from “late-stage empire” indicator or imperial overstretch which is when its interest expenses for debt are greater than defence spending. Last year America’s interest expense was ~900 billion$ and is crossing 1T$ & possibly 1.4T$ despite their every action. This is why scott bessant (USA finance minister/treasury secretary) says his only focus is the 10Y Treasury yield. He dismissed the wall street sell-off as “This is a Mag7 problem not a MAGA problem”.

This is why DOGE. This is why now.

What is Trump doing?

Tariffs are not the end game. We are entering a long drawn trade war which is meant to re-engineer the global economic order. Tariffs are the headline catcher, they are the act before the act. They are the misdirection of a magician as he performs his trick.

Tariffs actually hurt their objectives since it strengthens $ & also pushes partly burden on american consumers. Tariffs also unfairly penalize even net trade deficit countries like india. Or countries which whom USA runs trade surplus like UK.
Tariffs are a negotiation tactic. A way to bring china & everyone else on the table. Negotiation can only be conducted if the other person wants it more badly than you do. This is the thinking. Make them bleed before you implement the actual actions.
The real game is capital controls. This is clearly outlined in writings of @michaelxpettis, @michaeljmcnair, @SteveMiran.

America needs to stop the world from buying american financial instruments. In order of priority they want the world to do the following :

Save less. Dont run trade surpluses. Specially with America. Michael pettis’s “can trade interventions lead to freer trade” is a must read: https://carnegieendowment.org/china-financial-markets/2024/02/can-trade-intervention-lead-to-freer-trade?lang=en
If you must save. Dont save in $. When you save in $ then it forces america to create fiscal deficit & debt to accommodate that net global savings. So america is willingly encouraging the world to dedollarize by which we mean save in other neutral reserve assets like Gold, Silver.
Sovereign Wealth Fund: In fact the sovereign wealth fund is another way of achieving same objective. America buys up assets in the rest of the world. This reverse or inverts the capital flows & forces the trade account flows to reverse by weakening the $ strengthening the other currencies.
Invest in US Factories: If the world must save in $ then america wants them to invest in their factories & create real jobs for americans. The class imbalance in america is unbelievable. The top 1% can buy 99% of all homes in america if they wanted to. The top 10% consume 50% of all consumption in America. Two thirds of america couldnt come up with 2000$ in a crisis if they had one. The average life expectancy of a non college grad in America is 7 years, seven whole years less than college grads. This is due to the hollowing out of american industrial might over the last few years. Few economists assume that being developed automatically means less manufacturing. This is not so. Look at Germany or Japan as an example.

What is the end game?

It is a Mar-a-Lago accord which would be another global economic system reordering event. I expect following features in this system:

Countries are prevented from running persistent large trade surpluses with penalties for doing so.
Dollar depreciation vs other currencies to make american manufacturing more competitive
Reversal of tariffs.
Potentially, some backing of the new $ system with gold, silver, other commodities.
I also expect america to be quite happy with stagflation since this sort of financial repression was common post WW2 in 1940s & helped them inflate away their debt from 120% to 50% of GDP. This means they want to let inflation run higher for longer which is a repression of bond holders by making real interest rates negative. This might be coupled with some form of capital controls seen post WW2.

What is going to happen now?

I think of this as a game theoretic setup. The worst case scenario for china is mar-a-lago accord since it results in Japanification of china. Which is what plaza accord caused to Japan.

Japan Example: Japan depended on Exports. America depreciated $ to make exports competitive. This hurt japanese economy & exports so japan started cutting interest rates. This led to a massive asset bubble (stock markets, real estate everything). At the peak of the bubble (around 1989), the grounds of Tokyo’s Imperial Palace—covering about 1.15 square kilometers (approx. 280 acres)—were famously reported to be valued at more than all of the real estate in the entire state of California.
China’s Response: China is hyper aware about this & really really doesnt want to turn into a japan. I expect china to respond not only with tariffs which wont hurt america a lot but in every n-th order consequence ways it can. Open source software to break the monopoly of US tech. Deep seek. Qwen. Alibaba models. More such open source models to compete away the profit pools of MAG7.
Weaponize Supply Chain: China will weaponize the supply chain. Rare earth minerals. Semiconductor (i expect china to take Taiwan in next 2-3 years). Anything & everything else that it can, will be weaponized.
Strategic Manufacturing: China may attempt to establish manufacturing bases in strategic locations to ensure american goods cant compete there. Eg: Chinese BYD, CATL factories in Hungary to open up Europe markets to them.
Impact on Bharat: People expect the tariffs to be good for Bharat since we are towards end of the tariff range at 26%. Nothing could be further than the truth. There are two big problems. No supply chains have the elasticity to absorb 26% price increases. countries will enter into a competitive devaluation of Currencies. Central bank of tariffed nations will cut interest rates. But every element of supply chain, Every manufacturer, exporter, importer, retailer, distributor & customer will need to shrink their savings rate. The tarrifs should also be seen as a way to shrink the savings of surplus countries. The tariff rates confirm this. Countries with the largest trade surplus have highest tariff rates. This shows us what its about. It is about reversing capital flows & balancing trade. The only problem is that tarrifs hurt american businesses & consumers as well. For this reason they are only a temporary negotiation tactic for bringing everyone on the table.
Global Demand Deficiency: The world is demand deficient ex America. Since America is walling itself off, this means that the world needs to absorb all the excess capacities which were sold into America (not China, as originally written, assuming author meant capacities previously sold to America). this means that 2nd order 3rd order consequences will be china dumping into india what it had planned to export to America & so forth. So all industries will suffer. If you own a manufacturer who is domestic focussed then even he will suffer if chinese used to export it to usa but now export it to india just to keep capacity utilization high.
Capital Flow Restrictions: Japan & china do not allow foreigners to buy their treasuries. Similarly bharat also has highest taxation on FII ownership. Why?? Because capital flows cause trade flows. If we allowed a large amount of capital $ flows into bharat, this further appreciate rupee & make our exports uncompetitive. When America tries to use Sovereign wealth fund to try & balance the capital account & other nations try to block these attempts, then it will provide even more legitimacy to america to place multiple capital controls in place. @michaelmcnair’s article on this subject is a must read. https://michaelmcnair.substack.com/p/the-sovereign-wealth-effect
Gold: I expect Gold to do really well for next 3-5 years. After all gold is real money. Everything else is a promise of money. AMerican $ is worth less if america cannot produce enough goods for you to buy and/or if america prints too many $ to devalue the $ that you hold. And you know that they need to print at least 160 trillion $ in next many decades at least (this number grows every year). Some people believe bitcoin will do well. I dont know. It has to register itself as sound money in order to be ‘digital gold’ as of now it is more like a ‘nasdaq clone’. I am also not 100% sure that push comes to shove can American security establishement get a back door entry into bitcoin? Id rather own gold. The money of last 5,000 years.
Company Performance: Individual companies will continue to do well if entrepreneur is hungry & hard working. Defence as a theme should do best in bharat since europe is arming itself. they need the weapons. Can we produce & supply them? Many people believe bottom might be in place for many individual stocks. This is just a fallacy of short term horizon thinking. Consider an EPC company which is at single digit multiple & i expect 100% EPS growth. It is clearly undervalued. But its order might be in Middle east. That project could be funded by chinese govt. Their trade surplus goes down, funding dries up, order never materializes or worse, project stops in the middle. It is impossible to predict how things will turn out but companies which are domestic focussed will do better than others.
GDP Growth Impact: I expect out GDP growth to go down from 6.5-7% to 5.5-6% if the trade war plays out with high intensity. This will impact domestic facing companies as well. if we previously assumed that they will grow at 50% now they might grow at 30%.
Pharma & Semicon Tariffs: Right now pharma & semiconductor are excluded from Tariffs. Why? In fact if you read Stephen miran’s paper it will become clear that pharma & semicon are most strategically important. They are excluded because they dont have the domestic capacity to produce these right now. But these are most important for America to produce domestically. I expect Pharma & semicon tarrifs to come into place in next 12-24 months whenever they feel they have critical mass of production capacities. Reason for not tarrifing now is that it is also politically sensitive given the widespread applications. The terminal value of these companies is impacted even today, market wont wait for actual tariffs to be announced when the direction is clear.

Predicting the end game here is equivalent to to visualize the outcome of a multi variate multi player game outcome which is as complex as world itself. Maybe the rishi of ancient Bharat could have done it. I cannot. I just know that we are in a regime where we need to very carefully watch actions of all nations & be prepared for a very difficult next 3-5 years.

I owe a massive intellectual debt to many great thinkers who have openly shared their working & reasoning which have allowed me to clearly see the world for what it is. In no particular order, if one wants to understand what is coming better, please follow & read everything written by & all videos of :

@michaelxpettis who i call the bheeshma pitama of the upcoming economic reset. He has been writing about it for last decade or more. His book “The great rebalance” is a must read.
@SteveMiran whos paper on restructuring trade systems outlines these many capital control policy actions america can undertake including taxing UST interest, swaping existing bonds with 0 interest century bonds
@michaeljmcnair whos articles like the sovreign wealth fund helped me connect the dots profoundly between capital & trade flows
@LukeGromen who’s videos got me started thinking about what is Trump doing & why
@ankitatIIMA guruji who’s videos got me started thinking about what is happening in the world & what is our place in it
@sanjeevsanyal sir who is follow very closely to understand how bharat is navigating these waters
@neelkanthmishra sir who i listen to every single week to understand how the world is shaping up & what is bharat’s role in it

Non exhaustive set of Sources:

jalansaurav · April 3, 2025, 2:18pm

These are great insights Sahil. Appreciate the intellectual depth and effort which have gone into bringing up this write up.

I would like to add few points to your detailed analysis. It is very difficult to make an accurate guess of how individual sectors/businesses will shape up based on a global trade war kind of scenario. For eg : You seem to have a bearish view on pharma in medium to long-term which I don’t agree with. In a recent interview to CNBC TV-18, CFO of Lupin said that the cost of manufacturing a similar drug in US is roughly 8x more than India. Most of the reputed pharma companies of our country which are exporting to US already have a plant in US still it is economically viable for them to manufacture generic products in India. Moreover, medicines being a product of mass consumption is consumed all over the world & our pharmaceutical industry have the competence to supply quality products at competitive prices all over the world and many companies already have a globally diversified revenue base. US market although significant is not the only export market in the world which they are catering to.

Similarly, in the auto industry if you observe the numbers of JLR carefully, of late North American market is doing better for them as compared to Europe and China. JLR has developed competence in the luxury/premium segment by manufacturing the vehicles in UK instead of India. I don’t think it would be a rocket science for them to develop the same competence or even better by putting up a manufacturing plant in let say a progressive state like Texas in US. This would help them to escape the tariff effect and also cater to the demand in both North & South America as well as exports to other distant countries if it is feasible.

Apart from that in many other sectors large India corporates now have the balance sheet strength and entrepreneurial courage to buy majority stake in some quality assets in the US and become a global player in their domain. For eg : Reliance Retail with more than 10k crs annual PAT and a USD 100 billion valuation have the financial muscle to buy a global retail chain like 7-Eleven and become a serious player in US and the world in the retail sector. Rapid industrialization of a country create a lot of demand for metals, minerals and other form of natural resources and not everything can be found in the same country. Growth of China in the 90s and 2000s was a boon for a mineral rich country like Australia and it also benefitted iron ore exporting countries like India. India corporates in the metals and mining sector have the option to lap up assets anywhere in the world where the supply need to be increased in order to cater to the demand which is going to come from US in the future. Industrial growth of a large economy in absolute terms have the ability to influence global demand in a big way.

Indian IT industry is making US companies more efficient and productive for more than 30 years now. Rapid growth of the manufacturing sector in the US and its multiplier effect in other parts of the US economy will only create more opportunities for our IT sector as per my understanding.

Somebody has rightly said that you get a better understanding of the risks involved in an economic ecosystem by understanding the things top down but money making opportunities always come up unannounced, unnoticed or unexpected through the bottom-up route.

Ashusharma · April 3, 2025, 4:22pm

Devaluation of currency will not work as tarriffs will be adjusted.

Manufacturing will move further from China.

Overall India can benefit if it stops dumping from rest of world but India will be affected for sure but not as others. With 26% tariffs pharma will do well in India as.other competitors hit more.

Very good analysis.

abkamath · April 3, 2025, 9:05pm

Kudos to you Sahil for digging deep into the trade war but at the end of the day it’s all presumption how things shape up in the real world. I am not sure whether US administration would like their currency to depreciate in order to boost their export but IMO, with US penalising countries who export more to US than importing from US will put pressure on each of such countries to import equivalent to their export. This will ensure each country to focus on what they are best at and for the remaining, they prefer to have such items to be imported from US. This according to me will be a win win situation for US and the ROW. However as I said, you have done a fantastic job. Keep it up.

myloginid · April 4, 2025, 3:41am

Some thoughts - Even though the problem of US deficits and $ been the reserve currency is well known, more than tariffs the US needs structural changes to manufacture in the US

Tax on the super rich so that the middle class and the poor can be provided appropriate support.
Cost of healthcare to come down and a free government funded healthcare
End of political lobbying and politicians to not be any longer allowed to invest in the stocks that they control the policy for
Food industry has to be regulated that mostly has made US citizens fat, obese and sick
Free education upto university level so that cost of education does not need loans
Chinese wall between investments and savings banking so that banks dont fool around with savings money

The sad part is that none of the above will happen in Trumps time and the next president will undo all that Trump has done. The US took 25-30 years to get to this. They will need 25-30 to get back and as every one knows getting back is much harder.

satishwe · April 4, 2025, 7:47pm

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Vineetjain111 · April 4, 2025, 8:08pm

Here’s a short video that details all that Sahil is speaking about. Does make sense given the motivation is national security as without manufacturing coming back to the US, China is in a significant stronger position compared to the US to be the leader of the world economically and militarily. Restructuring of US debt is an added motivation.

I live in the US and this theory is quite popular among a lot of leading voices here.

Prabhat_Mohanty · April 5, 2025, 5:21am

Really liked the points raised by Sahil, though don’t agree with all the inferences. My 2 cents on disagreement.
We are forgetting the basic facts that America is a democracy. And Trump is very impatient. These 2 are against the premises raised by Sahil.
Tariffs are against free economy and Capitalism, based on which America became super power.
Tariffs are counter productive as these are against efficiency and production of economics factors.
Tariffs are creating foes out of friends, which goes against security concept.
America is conceding space to China, just it’s supremacy is diluted.
If the real intention is to bring manufacturing back to America, is it practical to think that America can produce everything.
Most importantly you should accept that it is a dynamic world. If America’s GDP was more than 50% a century ago, you can not bring it back. With aspirational motivation increasing everywhere, America’s share has to godown.If America is uneasy to cede space to others, then it will be at its own peril. You can’t browbeat others to follow you indefinitely. Imagine what will happen to America’s superpower status, if entire Europe comes out of NATO.
NB- These are my general ideas and not thought provoking articulation.

Ghonarbochon · April 5, 2025, 6:11am

Assuming Trump really wants to do what Sahil bhai has pointed out, the problem is in executing it .Everyone has a plan but execution is usually complicated .Since Trump has raised so much tariff barriers , the financing will be the problem …
1.With stocks plummeting who will come with cash to create the factories with no assurance in sight that the next president will not reverse the decisions ?Foreign investors will not dare mostly because USA has become unstable and untrustworthy policy wise . The certainty that US markets and investments in US bonds will hold value is no longer true since half the world thinks Trump is going for devaluing the dollar .So who will put up the cash ?
2. Most of the equipments thats needed to build up the factories and the supply chain now lies on the other side of tariff wall . So that means more cost than usual to build up the factories .Which listed large companies with the reserves will take the risk to go patriotic when their price is already down by a quarter or more ?
3. If the most important suppliers do not come to negotiating table , can America build by vertical integration ? Musk did for spaceX, but Genius is not mass produced .
4. With stock market crashing and stagflation in sight, does Trump has peoples backing to push ahead ignoring the hardships ? Already states like Maine and California are trying to dig below the tariff wall .
IMHO, USA being a democracy , it cant endure as much pain as China can and China is in no mood to play Trumps game at his terms. lets see if Trump dares to double the Chinese tariff as he pledged he would do for any country that retaliated ,if he does not some other countries may follow suit and make things even more difficult for him.

StonePitbull · April 5, 2025, 7:11am

Domestic manufacturing will not return. Even intellectual work is being outsourced to developing nations or to AI. Post globalisation habits are impossible to kick.
95 years ago the US levied the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, worldwide tariffs that were designed to encourage domestic production. We live in a completely different world now. Our world would be totally unrecognizable compared to the early 1900s. It’s been a hundred years since then. A lot has changed.
Trump will need a time machine to bring manufacturing back. People are already voting with their wallets by dumping US stocks, 11 trillion wiped out since Trump’s inauguration.

pkfrmiitr · April 5, 2025, 7:30am

My two cents on this tariff scenario:

n last two & half decades supply chain shifted to low cost China & South Asian economies , thanks to basic ore / metal reserves & cheap labor.
This caused lack of new capacities building up in advanced economies.
Money started flowing to China which is further being invested to establish supply chain in Africa , South Americas & South Asian economies .
Incremental capital being invested in futuristic technolgies such as EV, hydrogen, renewable, AI which will bring more capital for Chinese in future as other developing countries will get further dependent on them.
We all know the more capital you have the higher negotiation power on table for any geo-strategic agenda
US has started recognizing the increasing Chinese hegemony since Trump previous regime. Therefore more & more protectionist policies by imposing tariff measures so that it hurts Chinese maximum directly or indirectly.
However in my view such measures are only reactionary in nature and only going to lead further stagflation in US when you already have high interest rates environment compared to 15 years back.

In conclusion within next few quarters if not months we might see reversal in these tariffs imposition basis bilateral negotiations.

ashwin2 · April 5, 2025, 9:10am

you spent generous time researching this and chose to share it, I mean that’s so good on your part. But I wanted to write to you to say- you write really well. I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed reading this piece, my experience was that of watching an incredible edge-of-the-seat thriller

akash_das · April 5, 2025, 9:31am

To understand the risks we should first agree on the facts.

They can’t get all the manufacturing back in short time but will try nonetheless.
They can’t put tarrif on critical materials at present but will put them in the future.

So the question arises, should we give the same multiple to export oriented companies compared to domestic facing as we were giving in the past?
Also, will this risk be gone once the tarrif war is over?

StonePitbull · April 5, 2025, 10:09am

This thread

keeyes · April 6, 2025, 5:09am

I believe this is only a short term setback. USA will never get all the manufacturing back since they neither have the resources nor the skills to accommodate such a move. India has a sizeable market and companies should start looking to exploit that rather increasing the dependence on exports. India is also not a significant trading partner for the USA and hence the impact is minimal than what’s currently being projected.

Edited

Hrushikesh_Patil · April 6, 2025, 6:26am

USA is India’s second largest trading partner, behind China by only few billion dollars.

DeveshGaur · April 9, 2025, 7:53pm

I don’t know how this will be interpreted by moderators and other members, but I want to take a stance here.

Now that Trump has given a pause of 90 days on the tariffs and lowered it for all other countries except China, and it is abundantly clear that this wasn’t some larger than life, conspiracy theory-esque way of changing the global order in one day, I want to call out the behaviour that Sahil demonstrated on this thread earlier.

While the language that a few of the members used could have been better phrased, the attitude that was demonstrated by Sahil was not acceptable either. The way he called all of us ‘news-readers’ shows a certain amount of contempt which isn’t healthy for constructive dialogue. Showing other people down on the basis of your assumptions on how the world is working-which there is no proof to- is downright arrogant and extremely bad in taste.

All the initial messages by participants were clear questions and arguments advanced by other members who were attempting to understand a dynamic situation from multiple perspectives which is in the spirit of this platform. However, the way these queries were dismissed was not good for a public-led discussion.

This isn’t about being petty, but about understanding how this behaviour is not conducive to the spirit of this platform especially considering there are thousands of young ‘news-readers’ who are trying to learn something from this platform. Keeping this in mind, I’m proceeding to report a few of the original posts that Sahil put out- this is again not for the main message-because I feel that does show a certain research based mindset, but for the ‘news-reader’ and ‘we are out of globalisation’ styled remarks which I felt were in bad taste and extremely under-substantiated. If other members agree, I would really appreciate if you do the same thing here.