Dancers of the Saint Balthazar Kamba Kua traditional group perform in honour of Saint Balthazar, one of the Three Wise Men, during the Afro-Paraguay festival of Kamba Kua, in Fernando de la Mora, Paraguay, on January 6, 2024. The annual festival is a tradition that keeps Paraguay's Afro-descendants connected with their African roots through ancestral dance, drumming and customs. (Photo by Norberto Duarte/AFP Photo)

Performers debut in the first decade of May 2024 the new Cirque du Soleil Spirit production at the Macallan Estate in Speyside, Scotland, created specially to commemorate the whisky brand’s 200th anniversary. (Photo by Cirque du Soleil 2024)

A woman checks on two of her puppies after her neighborhood was evacuated because of severe flooding in Channelview, Texas, on Saturday, May 4, 2024. Days of rain caused rivers to swell, leaving homes and businesses flooded and thousands of people displaced. (Photo by Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle/AP Photo)

A labourer drinks water from a pipe at a brick kiln on a hot summer day in Sukkur, Sindh province on May 23, 2024. The Pakistan Meteorological Department said temperatures are expected to hit as high as 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in parts of rural Sindh. (Photo by Shahid Ali/AFP Photo)

A girl dismantles a Kalashnikov rifle during a training lesson focused on the “Defence of Ukraine” at the military-patriotic center for schoolchildren in Lviv on May 17, 2023, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by Yuriy Dyachyshyn/AFP Photo)

This aerial photograph shows a stork with two chicks on a nest installed on a high voltage line mast in Bouee, western France, on June 3, 2025. (Photo by Loïc Venance/AFP Photo)

Cats gather in front of a house damaged by shelling in the town of Dokuchayevsk, south of Donetsk, February 12, 2015. (Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

Some are in it just for the money, others to help buy a meal. Then there are those who trade for fun or to spend time among friends. Millions of investors – pensioners, security guards, high-school students – dominate China's stock markets, conducting about 80 percent of all trades. Retirees gather in brokerage houses dotted around China also to enjoy some company and savour the air conditioning on hot days. Some start as young as 13, trading from home with an eye on future careers in finance. Winning isn't guaranteed. This year, among the most turbulent in China's financial history, its stock markets more than doubled in the six months to May, only to crash amid concerns that growth in the country, which makes everything from cars to steel, is slowing faster than previously thought. (Photo by Aly Song/Reuters)