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)

Wendy Adriaens, owner of animal rescue farm “De Passiehoeve” and nicknamed the Ostrich Whisperer, poses for a photo with three-year-old male ostrich Flodder, in Kalmthout, Belgium, 25 July 2022. (Photo by Stephanie Lecocq/EPA/EFE/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Flames from a burning barricade lit by pro-democracy protesters is reflected in the windows of a passing bus as passengers watch on during a protest gathering in front of Mong Kok police station on September 22, 2019 in Hong Kong, China. Pro-democracy protesters have continued demonstrations across Hong Kong, calling for the city's Chief Executive Carrie Lam to immediately meet the rest of their demands, including an independent inquiry into police brutality, the retraction of the word “riot” to describe the rallies, and genuine universal suffrage, as the territory faces a leadership crisis. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

Family members mourn the passing of Manuela Chavez, who died from symptoms related to the new coronavirus at the age of 88, as a government team prepares to remove her body from inside her home, in the Shipibo Indigenous community of Pucallpa, in Peru's Ucayali region, Monday, August 31, 2020. While the lucky are cured with ancestral ailments, the less fortunate often die at home. A government team travels from one spartan, thatch-roofed home to the next, removing the dead from their homes where they took their last breaths. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

Migrants with a stick, stones and knife fight with each other after a brawl erupted over a place in an overcrowded train heading to the Serbian border at the train station in Gevgelija, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, 14 August 2015. The number of migrants passing through Macedonia increases day by day, local sources said. From the beginning of the year to mid-June 2015, nearly 160,000 migrants landed in the southern European countries, mainly Greece and Italy, on their way to wealthier countries in Western and Northern Europe, according to estimates by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). (Photo by Georgi Licovski/EPA)

A relative (L) of Champa Devi, 88, sits next to her body, minutes after her death at Mukti Bhavan (Salvation House) at Varanasi, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, June 21, 2014. The city of Varanasi, on the banks of the River Ganges, is widely considered Hinduism's holiest city and many Hindus believe that dying there and having their remains scattered in the Ganges allows their soul to escape a cycle of death and rebirth, attaining “moksha” or salvation. “Mukti Bhavan” or “Salvation House”, is a charity-run hostel that caters for people who wish to come to Varanasi to die. Guests can normally stay up to two weeks after which, if they haven't yet passed away, they are gently asked to leave. (Photo by Danish Siddiqui/Reuters)

Gisele Marie, a Muslim woman and professional heavy metal musician, holds her Gibson Flying V electric guitar as walks down stairs at the end of a fund raising concert for the Syrian refugees in Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro November 8, 2015. Based in Sao Paulo, Marie, 42, is the granddaughter of German Catholics, and converted to Islam several months after her father passed away in 2009. Marie, who wears the burka, has been fronting her brothers' heavy metal band "Spectrus" since 2012. (Photo by Nacho Doce/Reuters)

Migrants with a stick, stones and knife fight with each other after a brawl erupted over a place in an overcrowded train heading to the Serbian border at the train station in Gevgelija, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, 14 August 2015. (Photo by Georgi Licovski/EPA/EFE)