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These past few weeks have been a wild one in the stock market. But if you’re not involved in finance, the whole situation might go a bit over your head. No worries! That’s why I’m here to dumb the whole thing down for your stupid peanut brain with some condescending metaphor about bananas or whatever.
Let’s say Sally has five bananas. That’s one more than four bananas. Are you with me so far? She bought the bananas for, I don’t know, 10 dollars. Remember, “bananas” starts with a “B.” “B” is the first sound in “ball.” Try sounding it out!
Marcus thinks that bananas are yucky. He thinks all his friends hate bananas so the price for bananas will go down. Oh, sorry, is money too complicated for you? Let’s use Legos instead. So Marcus decides to “short” the bananas so he can make some Legos. “Shorting” is a word we professionals use, okay? He borrows the bananas from Sally and sells them to Peter. Soon bananas cost less Legos because they’re mushy and yucky. When Marcus buys the bananas back from Peter and gives them back to Sally, he now has more Legos than when he started.
See it’s not that complicated! Even your mouselike pudding skull can keep up. High five, slugger!
Now pretend Peter learned to make banana bread. Let’s say there are chocolate chips in there. Yummy, right? Mmmm…. Chocolate is awesome! Now everyone loves bananas and they cost more Legos. Oh no! Now Marcus has to spend a lot of Legos to buy back the bananas to give back to Sally! If you don’t understand, try going back and rereading. It helps to read aloud, but make sure you speak in an indoor voice.
Now replace Peter with Redditors, Marcus with Hedge Funds, bananas with abstract portions of major corporations traded millions of times per second by supercomputers, and Legos with billions of dollars that could be used to end world hunger immediately.
See? It’s easy and fun! Now that you understand how it all works, even a low-IQ mouth-breather like you can take part in the magic of the free market!
