Once upon a time in a place overrun with monkeys, 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, they became harder to catch, so the villagers stopped their effort.
The man then announced that he would now pay $20 for each one. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.
But soon the supply diminished even further and they were ever harder to catch, so people started going back to their farms and forgot about monkey catching.
The man increased his price to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so scarce that it was an effort to even see a monkey, much less catch one.
The man now announced that he would buy monkeys for $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on his behalf.
While the man was away the assistant told the villagers. 'Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has bought. I will sell them to you at $35 each and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.'
The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys. They never saw the man nor his assistant again and once more there were monkeys everywhere.
Perhaps you now you have a better understanding of how the stock market works!
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I have questions
by Anonymous Inquiring Minds (not verified) on Tue Oct 07, 2008 09:42 PM PDTThe analogy is good but I have a few questions. First of all where is this village that's overrun by monkeys that takes Dollar as currency? Then how did the Man carry out the logistics of building cages in the village and feeding and maintaining captured monkeys. How long did it take going from $20 to $50? How did the Man survive in the village during his stay? Did the Man bring his own supplies, or did he have to trade with the villagers? Why would the Man be interested in buying his own monkeys for $50, didn't the villagers ask themselves? What kind of relationship did the villagers have with the monkeys before the arrival of the Man? Were they vegetarians?
I take objection to this
by Anonymous77 (not verified) on Tue Oct 07, 2008 05:21 AM PDTMonkeys aren't that dumb and they also have really good social cohesion genes.
Nice piece though.
I see the analogy clearly:
by Ten (not verified) on Mon Oct 06, 2008 04:07 PM PDTMan = Corporate America
Assistant = Bush/Cheney/McCain