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)

A picture made available on 20 October 2015 shows a foreign tourist posing for a souvenir photograph with a figure of a tiger head at a private zoo on Phuket Island, Thailand, 17 October 2015. Each day hundreds of tourists, including young children, visit the private tiger zoo where visitors are allowed to touch and pose for photographs with unchained tigers inside their enclosures. (Photo by Rungroj Yongrit/EPA)

“Shortly after he arrived, Van Agtmael witnessed the aftermath of this suicide bombing at a cafe that soldiers frequented in Mosul. Nine people died and 23 were wounded”. (Photo and caption by Van Agtmael/Harrison Jacobs/Magnum Photos)

A woman smokes a mask bong on the final day of Hempfest, Seattle's annual gathering to promote the legalization of marijuana, on August 17, 2014. (Photo by Jordan Stead/Seattlepi.com)

A Ukrainian servicewoman fires a 2S7 Pion self-propelled gun at a position, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, on a frontline in Kherson region, Ukraine on November 9, 2022. (Photo by Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters)

Divers perform during a Christmas-themed underwater show at the Aqua Planet 63 aquarium in Seoul on December 8, 2022. (Photo by Anthony Wallace/AFP Photo)

A woman reacts as rescuers search for survivors through the rubble of collapsed buildings in Adana, on February 6, 2023 after a 7,8 magnitude earthquake struck the country's south-east. The combined death toll has risen to over 1,900 for Turkey and Syria after the region's strongest quake in nearly a century. Turkey's emergency services said at least 1,121 people died in the earthquake, with another 783 confirmed fatalities in Syria. (Photo by Can Erok/AFP Photo)

In this May 17, 2015, photo, two men walk past pagodas at Ngwe Saung beach, Pathein township, about 145 miles from Yangon, Myanmar. (Photo by Khin Maung Win/AP Photo)