Monkey Business in the Stock Market


A friend had sent me a short story that I think it is worth to share. :-)

Once upon a time, in a village, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.

The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them.

The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort. He further announced that he would now buy at $20.

This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.

Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms.
The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on his behalf.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers. 'Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.'

The villagers rounded up with all their savings and bought all the monkeys.

They never saw the man nor his assistant again, only monkeys everywhere!

Now you have a better understanding of how the stock market works...


"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."
- Mark Twain

1 Comments->:

serenitystocks.com said...

The villagers are what we call speculators, people who buy stocks only with the intention of selling them at a higher price without actually looking at what the stock is truly worth. These are people who are gambling on stocks for quick profits without doing much research, and there are plenty of companies out there selling them monkeys :)

Investors buy good, well-researched stocks and hold on to them. Investors look at stocks as growing, dividend-paying assets, and not as a shortcut to overnight riches.

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