Saturday, October 11, 2008

Just monkeying around ...

Let Me See If I Understand This Correctly.

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 the 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 sparse 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 again there were monkeys everywhere.

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

9 comments:

Pammie said...

LOVE IT!

Bill said...

I appreciate this Aha! moment.

Mary Christine said...

Well, except for the fact that I have invested my hard earned money into a bunch of worthless monkeys, when I could have been saving it - or spending it on something I WANTED!

Scott W said...

Poor monkeys. Being taken advantage of like that.

Akannie said...

OH....
So that's how it works....

J-Online said...

How appropriate!

steveroni said...

Lyrics to a famous old song:

"Oh the monkey wrapped his tail around the flag pole, to scratch his *** ****, because it itched....!"

For a musician, this song sets a tempo at MM (Metronome Marking) at MM: 120, which is equivalent to half-a-second.

Aren't ya glad you settled in to read this comment? Think what you might have missed!

Monkey for sale:
Yes, it's a male
Missing his tail
Now hear him wail

Todd HellsKitchen said...

That sounds about right...

Zanejabbers said...

Quit monkeying around.