A GUIDE TO THE STOCK MARKET (FOR LOCAL PEOPLE)
There is a lot of talk about the “Stock Market” in the world news today, a lot of which might be confusing to some of our readers who are hearing about it for the first time, so here is the official Glanmire News Area guide to the “Stock Market”;
First of all, to own “Stocks” you have to be an American. Some foreign “investors” try to get around this by having someone they know or are related to live in America and pose as an American in order to buy “Stocks” on their behalf . If they get caught they simply tell the “Authorities”; “Sure how was I to know my brother wasn’t an American? He’s been living there years”.
But what are “Stocks”?
These “Stocks” are bought and sold and bought on what is known as “The New York Stock Exchange Market”. As with any Farmers’ Market on a Thursday, a lot of the sellers aren’t actually farmers at all. They’re bakers and other types of bakers and people who make jam and a lot of them consider themselves as fitting under the umbrella banner of “Artisanal”.
In “The New York Stock Exchange Market” (named as such because it is a “Market”) Americans and pretend Americans (known as “Americons”) sell their jams and breads and chocolate brownies to each other. On any given day, depending on the general appetite in the room, a seller can find themselves running low on goods, or “Short of Stock”, earlier in the day than expected. If word gets around early in the morning that there’s a particularly good batch of chocolate brownies on the go, other sellers and buyers can flock to the chocolate brownie seller. Those who get in early pay the normal price for a chocolate brownie ($1.50ppcb (price per chocolate brownie)), but as the “Stocks” of brownies gets “Short”, some of the wealthier and more blasé buyers may offer more than the normal price for one of the remaining chocolate brownies, $2ppcb for example.
The price of a single chocolate brownie can rise exponentially until there are no more chocolate brownies left and the chocolate brownie seller has won. But they might not be the only winner. Sometimes, one or two of the early adopters of the chocolate brownie “Stock” may purchase more than one chocolate brownie early in the day claiming; “I just really like chocolate brownies” or “Today’s my cheat day, lol”, but then secretly keep hold of their second chocolate brownie and simply watch the price per chocolate brownie go up until the original seller’s “Stock” has been “Shorted” to completion. At this point, this “Rogue Trader” steps in and announces to the room (often right at the end of lunch when people are looking for something sweet as a nice little dessert) that they have acquired some of this high value “Stock”.
With a large serrated knife, they then cut their extra chocolate brownie into smaller (arguably more digestible) slices of chocolate brownie, which they sell for up to 10 times the original ppcb of a single chocolate brownie at the start of trading, thereby making a massive gain on their original investment. Plus they ate the other chocolate brownie they bought that morning so they’re really winning.
“That all sounds pretty simple. I’m going to get my brother to move to America, become an Americon, buy loads of chocolate brownies and then send me back the profits when he sells the small chocolate brownie slices after lunch”, says you. But, the “Stock Market” is never so simple. The easy wins are never as easy as they sometimes appear, except on the days when they are. You could send your brother to America, have him become an Americon, get him to buy all of the chocolate brownie “Stocks” he can get his GAA player hands on only to find that on that particular day all the other traders just wanted some bread or a bit of jam for their sandwiches they brought from home.
The “Stock Market” is a volatile place where tempers, nostrils and pant legs often flare. It’s not for everyone and you can lose everything, including your brother.
If you’d like some tips on what “Stocks” to invest in don’t hesitate to contact us at GNA via our Twitter or Instagram; @GNAOnline. (That full stop isn’t part of it. It’s just @GNAOnline. Same again there with that one. Don’t type that into Twitter or Instagram. It was just the end of the sentence.) We’ll sort you out.