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
thevillagers 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.