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)

Indigenous nurses from the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health (Sesai) of the Arapiuns ethnic group and Tapuia ethnic groups perform a rapid COVID-19 test on Chief Domingos from the Arapium tribe on the banks of the lower Tapajos River in the municipality of Santarem in western Para on July 19, 2020. (Photo by Tarso Sarraf/AFP Photo)

Tigray refugees who fled the conflict in the Ethiopia's Tigray ride a bus going to the Village 8 temporary shelter, near the Sudan-Ethiopia border, in Hamdayet, eastern Sudan, Tuesday, December 1, 2020. (Photo by Nariman El-Mofty/AP Photo)

Wild weather drenches tourists, Sydney, Australia on March 7, 2017. A series of photographs as tourists take a soaking on Sydney's iconic Manly Ferry sailing big swells near Sydney's North Head. The Weather Bureau warns of large and powerful surf conditions expected to be hazardous for coastal activities such as rock fishing, swimming and surfing. (Photo by Hugh Peterswald/Pacific Press via ZUMA Wire/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

In this April 7, 2015 photo, a tourist peers through the door of a jail cell inside the now empty Garcia Moreno prison during a guided tour for the public in Quito, Ecuador. According to tour guides, this cell was nicknamed “Los Polillas”, or “The Moths”. Here, in a room designed to hold two prisoners, about 15 inmates with drug addictions were locked in overnight by the prison gangs that controlled daily life. The locked-in prisoners were also known to prostitute themselves to get access to drugs. (Photo by Dolores Ochoa/AP Photo)

An Iranian man sells colorful ropes at the Tehrans old Bazaar, the place where the main economy trades take place, in Tehran, Iran, 25 January 2016. Reports state that Iranian officials expected the Iranian economy to grow on an average of eight percent over the coming five years following the lifting of sanctions against Iran. (Photo by Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA)

A billboard depicting a soldier, with a slogan reading “Contract service. A real man's job”, in St. Petersburg, Russia, 02 June 2023. On 24 February 2022, Russian troops entered Ukrainian territory in what the Russian president declared a “Special Military Operation”, starting an armed conflict. (Photo by Anatoly Maltsev/EPA)

The original first mechatronic E.T. character from Steven Spielberg's 1982 film “E.T. the Extra Terrestrial” on display at Julien's Auctions in Beverly Hills, California on December 12, 2022, ahead of the “Julien's Auctions and TCM Present: Icons & Idols: Hollywood”. The auction will take place in-person and online on December 17 and 18. (Photo by Frederic J. Brown/AFP Photo)