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)

Workers clad in a dog and a wild boar costumes, to represent the outgoing year of the dog and incoming year of the wild boar, clean windows on the side of a hotel in Tokyo on December 13, 2018. (Photo by Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP Photo)

On the morning of the February 18th, 2025, a foreign tourist wearing a scarf walks past a store window with spring clothes hanging on the street in Myeongdong, Seoul. (Photo by Park Seong-won)

A demonstrator smashes a shop window during a protest condemning the arrest of rap singer Pablo Hasél in Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, February 20, 2021. A fifth night of peaceful protests to denounce the imprisonment of a Spanish rap artist once more devolved into clashes between police and fringe group members who set up street barricades and smashed storefront windows in Barcelona. (Photo by Joan Mateu/AP Photo)

A group of women dance in a pool in Callao, Peru, Sunday, February 22, 2015. One of centers for the front-doorstep, pool-party phenomenon is Lima's port city of Callao. People hold parties in them and sometimes entire blocks chip in to buy a pool, which can be had in local department stores for a bit over $100. (Photo by Martin Mejia/AP Photo)

A woman takes photographs of falling snow from a window during a heavy snowfall, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in Seoul, South Korea, January 12, 2021. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

A zookeeper counts penguins through an observation window during the annual stocktake at ZSL London Zoo in central London on January 3, 2023. (Photo by Justin Tallis/AFP Photo)

A man looks out of a window as Palestinians inspect the site and search for casualties of an overnight Israeli air strike on a house at al-Shati (Beach) refugee camp, in Gaza City, on July 15, 2025. (Photo by Mahmoud Issa/Reuters)