I’ve liked a lot of your stuff, Umair. But you’ve deviated from your typical diligent analysis in this piece. Perhaps investing is an arena in which you should avoid commenting.

You play on emotions, and usually it’s good.

But please do not play on your readers’ short-term emotions by leveraging normal stock market volatility as a means to create hyperbolic false correlations to the lives of your average reader.

Any of your readers who have experience with finance and making money in the markets over long time periods will counsel you to avoid the emotional and short-term perspective, which your piece here clearly hinges upon.

Your readers who have money in the stock market, even if that amount is meager, should not panic nor sell unless they will need access to their money immediately (in which case it probably should have been in cash anyway). They should do the opposite for that matter: they should buy more of a diversified index fund if they have the capital available, then they should go read a copy of The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham.