How the stock market works according to Alice

One day a man appeared in a remote village

"I'd like to buy some monkeys," he said, "and I'll pay $10 each for them ..."

Now, the villagers knew that there are plenty of monkeys around so they went out into the jungle and rounded up hundreds of them which they sold for $10 each. Then, as the monkey population began to diminish, the villagers stopped hunting them down.

"I'll pay you $15 each" said the man.

So the villagers went back into the jungle to collect the monkeys.

Soon the there were hardly any monkeys left to be collected.

So the villagers returned to their daily chores.

The offer was raised to $20 per monkey, but by now they were so rare that it was impossible to catch one, let alone see one ...

The man then offered $50 for each monkey, but he had to go to the city on business and that his associate would take care of everything.

As soon as the trader left, his associate gathered all the villagers around him and told them that as it was so hard to catch monkeys now, they could buy all the ones his boss had in the cages for $35 each and that when he came back, they could sell them to him for $50 a head.

The people returned to their villages and sold all their possessions to raise the money then came back and bought all the monkeys.

That same night, however, the assistant disappeared and he and his boss were never seen again.

All that was left were hundreds of villagers running around in despair with only monkeys!....

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