On the same day, another headline quietly passes by.

“All 12 PSU banks post the highest ever quarterly profit in Q3.”

Two headlines. Two very different emotional reactions.

One is designed to trigger fear.
The other requires thought.

This contrast tells you everything you need to know about how financial content works today.

Let us start with the first statement.

“Nifty can head to 19,000 by year end.”

What does this actually mean?

Nothing.

It is not a forecast with accountability.
It is not a probability-based outcome.
It is not a scenario analysis.
It is not tied to valuations, earnings, liquidity, credit growth, fiscal policy, or balance sheets.

It is a sentence designed to travel fast.

If Rohit had said, “Nifty can also go to 24,000,” it would be equally valid and equally meaningless.

Because anyone can say “can.”

I can say Nifty can go to 16,000.
I can say Nifty can go to 30,000.
I can say Nifty can stay flat.

All of these statements are technically true.

None of them help an investor make a decision.

The word “can” is the most abused word in financial media.

It carries no responsibility.
It carries no probability.
It carries no cost (to the writer) if wrong.

Yet it carries enormous emotional impact.

That is why it is used.

Now let us ask a more important question.

Should investors even read this?

The honest answer is no.

Not because markets never fall.
Not because risks do not exist.
But because this is not how serious investing decisions are made.

Real investing is not about reacting to someone else’s imagination.
It is about aligning your money with your goals, your time horizon, your cash flows, and your behavior.

If a headline can shake your conviction, the problem is not the headline.
The problem is that conviction was never built properly.

Now let us look at the second headline.

“All 12 PSU banks post highest ever quarterly profit.”

This is not an opinion.
This is a fact.

It reflects credit growth.
It reflects improving balance sheets.
It reflects lower NPAs.
It reflects years of cleanup, recapitalization, and discipline.

And yes, you are absolutely right.
Nifty and Bank Nifty are not the same.
But banking is a large and influential part of the Nifty.
More importantly, banking is the plumbing of the economy.

When banks are strong, lending expands.
When lending expands, businesses grow.
When businesses grow, earnings grow.
When earnings grow, equity markets eventually reflect that reality.

Markets do not move in straight lines.
But they are not random either.

They are messy reflections of underlying economic engines.

Now let us come to the most dangerous illusion in investing.

The belief that someone somewhere knows what will happen next.

They do not.

Not Rohit.
Not Mint.
Not me.
Not you.
Not the smartest fund manager on the planet.

No one knew that markets would rally after the budget fall.
No one knew that the India US deal would be announced so fast.
No one knew tariff numbers would come in lower than expected.
No one knew gold would crash and behave the way it is.
No one knew silver would wipe out trillions in value.

And yet, after every event, there will be people explaining why it was obvious.

These people are not forecasters.
They are narrators.

They explain the past with confidence and sell the illusion of foresight.

Investors confuse explanation with prediction.
They are not the same.

If someone truly knew the future, they would not be writing columns.
They would be compounding quietly.

Now let us talk about probability.

Could Nifty go to 19,000?

Yes.

Could it go lower?

Yes.

Is the probability of a dramatic collapse based on current earnings, balance sheets, and economic momentum high?

No.

That does not mean markets cannot correct.
They always do.

But corrections are part of investing.
They are not signals to abandon long-term plans.

If markets only went up smoothly, equity would not offer higher returns.
Volatility is not a bug.
It is the price of admission.

The real danger is not market falls.
The real danger is reacting to noise.

Every time you act on fear created by a headline, you lock in a behavioral cost.
You sell when prices are lower.
You buy when confidence returns.
You repeat this cycle until returns disappoint.
Then you blame markets.

This is how wealth is destroyed quietly.

Good investing is boring.
It is disciplined.
It is repetitive.
It ignores drama.

It focuses on things that matter.

Goals.
Planning.
Asset allocation.
Diversification.
Time.
Behavior.
Rebalancing.
Costs.
Tax efficiency.

None of these make headlines.
None of these get clicks.
But these are the only things that work.

What should an investor do when they see such news?

First, pause.
Ask, “Does this change my goal?”

Second, ask, “Does this change my time horizon?”

Third, ask, “Does this change my asset allocation?”

If the answer is no, then the news is irrelevant.

If your goal is ten or twenty years away, what Nifty does this year is background noise.

Markets will fall many times in your investing lifetime.
They will also surprise you on the upside many times.
Both are normal.

Trying to dodge every fall guarantees missing many rises.

Trying to predict short-term movements is a losing game dressed up as intelligence.

The job of an investor is not to predict.
It is to prepare.

Prepared investors do not need comforting when headlines scream.
They understand that markets are not a daily voting machine as Warren Buffett said.
They are a long-term weighing machine.

The job of a financial professional is not to interpret every headline.
It is to help clients ignore most of them.

Because peace of mind does not come from knowing what will happen next.
It comes from knowing you are positioned sensibly regardless of what happens next.

So no, this statement should not scare investors.
It should remind them of something more important.

That the biggest risk is not Nifty at 19,000.
The biggest risk is allowing nonsense to hijack long-term thinking.

Markets will do what they do.
Headlines will do what they do.

Your job is to stay grounded while both do their thing.

That is real investing.
Everything else is entertainment.