Let me start with a conversation.

Jay called me late one evening last week. His voice carried the kind of tension that does not come from numbers alone.

“Did you see what happened to gold and silver last week?” he asked. “It’s just going up and up.”

I told him I had seen it.

“And did you know this would happen?” he asked next.

“No,” I said calmly. “I did not.”

There was a pause.

“Then who did?” Jay asked. “Someone must have known. Someone somewhere always knows. My friends seem to know it. They also say the stock market will crash like 2008 because of Trump and Tariffs.”

That belief right there is the real problem. I wrote the post, “The Gold Illusion” right after.

In the last few days, gold and silver corrected sharply. An estimated seven trillion dollars of value vanished. That is almost the size of the entire Indian stock market *1.5 times. This is insane.

Today, an India US trade deal was signed faster than anyone expected, with tariffs landing at eighteen percent. Markets will react positively. Commentators will scramble. Social media will fill with explanations, predictions, and confident narratives that sounded as if the outcome had been obvious all along.

But it was not.

No one knew this would happen.

Not last month.
Not last week.
Not the night before.

Yet after the event, stories emerged that made it sound inevitable.

This is how markets fool people.

Events feel random before they happen and obvious after they happen. And in between, a large industry thrives by pretending to know what comes next.

Jay had read dozens of messages that week.

Gold is going to the moon.
This is the start of a 2008 style meltdown.
Equities are finished.
Buy silver now or regret it forever.
Exit everything before it is too late.

Each message came wrapped in confidence. Each one carried urgency. Each one implied that someone had cracked the code.

Jay believed some of it. How could he not? The volume of noise was overwhelming.

“I feel stupid,” he said. “Every time I ignore these messages, something happens. And every time something happens, I feel like I missed a signal.”

He called me again last night. I asked him a simple question.

“How many of those messages told you about this crash before it happened?”

He thought for a moment.

“None,” he admitted.

“And how many are explaining it perfectly now?” I asked.

“Almost all of them,” he replied, half laughing, half frustrated.

This is the illusion investors live with.

We believe that someone knows.
We believe that intelligence somewhere has certainty.
We believe that if we listen carefully enough, we can avoid discomfort.

But markets do not work that way.

The uncomfortable truth is that no one knows what will happen next week, next month, or even next year. Not with any consistency that can be used to build wealth.

What we see instead is a constant stream of confident nonsense.

After every move, someone claims they predicted it.
After every crash, someone says they warned you.
After every rally, someone explains why it was obvious.

This does not mean people are lying deliberately. Many genuinely believe their own stories. They mistake hindsight clarity for foresight ability.

Jay then asked a more important question.

“What should I do as an investor if no one knows anything?”

That question matters far more than predictions.

The job of an investor is not to forecast events. It is to survive uncertainty.

Markets are not dangerous because they move. They are dangerous because they tempt you to react to noise.

Gold falling sharply does not mean gold is useless.
Gold rising sharply does not mean gold is magical.
Equities falling does not mean capitalism is broken.
Equities rising does not mean risk has disappeared.

What changes is not reality. What changes is emotion.

The biggest mistake investors make is assuming that volatility requires action.

Most of the time, it does not.

What it requires is context.

Gold corrected sharply last week. But gold has gone through long periods of stagnation and sudden spikes before. Silver is even more volatile. These assets are emotional amplifiers. They move faster because belief moves faster.

The India US deal surprised markets. But geopolitical outcomes always surprise markets. If they did not, they would already be priced in.

The idea that someone somewhere has a clean roadmap of how things will unfold is comforting. It gives us the illusion of control. It gives us someone to blame or credit.

But it is an illusion.

The world is complex. Markets reflect that complexity. Outcomes are shaped by millions of decisions, incentives, and reactions. No single brain controls it.

Jay leaned back and said something honest.

“I think what scares me is not the loss. It is the feeling that I am missing something important.”

That feeling is universal.

And it is exploited relentlessly.

The financial content ecosystem thrives on fear of missing out and fear of loss. Both push people to act when they should pause.

Here is what most investors need to hear but rarely do.

You do not need to know what happens next.
You need a portfolio that can handle whatever happens next.

That is the difference between speculation and investing.

Investing is not about predicting gold prices, trade deals, or crashes.
It is about building resilience.

Resilience comes from diversification.
Resilience comes from appropriate asset allocation.
Resilience comes from matching investments to life goals.
Resilience comes from understanding time horizons.

Resilience does not come from reacting to headlines.

Jay had a reasonably diversified portfolio. Equities. Some debt. A small allocation to gold. Enough liquidity. Nothing extreme.

Yet emotionally, he felt exposed because he had been consuming too much noise.

“I feel like every message is telling me that disaster is around the corner,” he said.

I told him something simple.

“There is always a disaster around the corner. That does not mean it will hit you if you are prepared.”

Markets will always offer reasons to panic.

In 2008, it was financial collapse.
In 2013, it was taper tantrum.
In 2020, it was a pandemic.
In 2022, it was inflation and war.
In 2024 and 2025, it is geopolitics, AI, elections, and commodities.

Each time, the story changes. The fear remains the same.

What separates successful investors from anxious ones is not access to better information. It is the ability to ignore irrelevant information.

Jay asked me what he should do now.

“Nothing dramatic,” I said. “Review your plan. Check your allocation. Make sure it still matches your life. Then stop watching the circus.”

He smiled.

“That sounds too boring,” he said.

“Yes,” I replied. “And that is why it works.”

Boring is underrated in investing.

Excitement sells. Calm compounds.

The hardest thing for investors to accept is that uncertainty never goes away. It just changes form.

You will never reach a point where everything feels safe and predictable. Waiting for that moment is waiting forever.

What you can do instead is accept uncertainty and build around it.

That means understanding that sudden crashes will happen.
That means accepting that rallies will come without warning.
That means knowing that gold will disappoint you sometimes and surprise you other times.
That means knowing that equities will test your patience before rewarding it.

Most importantly, it means letting go of the belief that someone else knows better than you.

The market does not reward the most informed investor.
It rewards the most disciplined one.

Jay ended the call calmer than he started.

“I think I needed to hear that no one knows,” he said. “It oddly makes me feel better.”

It should.

Because once you stop believing in imaginary certainty, you can focus on what actually matters.

Your goals.
Your time horizon.
Your behavior.
Your ability to stay invested.
Your ability to ignore noise.

In the last several days , seven trillion dollars vanished from gold and silver markets.
Next week, something else will shock people.
Next year, a new crisis will dominate headlines.

This is not a flaw in the system. It is the system.

The question is not whether surprises will come.

The question is whether you are building your financial life assuming that someone knows the future or accepting that no one does.

Investors who accept uncertainty build portfolios.
Investors who chase certainty build stress.

What about you?