Raquel Poti performs on stilts during the Amigos da Onca street Carnival party, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Saturday, February 10, 2024. (Photo by Bruna Prado/AP Photo)

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)

Sunrise in Ely, Cambridgeshire on April 15, 2020 by the River Great Ouse, England. The warm weather is set to continue until the weekend. (Photo by Veronica Johansson Poultney/Bav Media)

Sunrise over a moor viewed from Littaford Tor, Dartmoor, UK, 2016. Autumn visits the windswept moors and granite tors of Dartmoor earlier than the rest of the south-west. While there aren’t many trees here, autumn shades appear in golden ferns and tan heather. Littaford Tors, near Two Bridges and a mile from Princetown, is a short walk and can be combined with a visit to the adjacent Wistman’s Wood. (Photo by Stuart Holmes)

A woman holds her dog after arriving from Russian-occupied territory at a registration and processing area for internally displaced people in Zaporizhzhia, in Ukraine, on May 8, 2022. (Photo by Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP Photo)

“People and Space”. Winner: Wanderer in Patagonia by Yuri Zvezdny (Russia) A lone stargazer stares up at the stars of our galaxy, the Milky Way, as they stretch across the night sky over the glacier “White Stones” (Piedras Blancas) in the Los Glaciares National Park, Argentina. El Chaltén, Santa Cruz Province, Argentina, 27 September 2016 iOptron Sky-Tracker mount, Sony A7S camera, 18 mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 5000, 30-second exposure Wanderer in Patagonia. (Photo by Yuri Zvezdny/Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017)

A protestor makes a selfie in front of a burning car during a national trade union demonstration in Brussels, Thursday November 6, 2014. Tens of thousands of demonstrators are converging on the Belgian capital to protest government policies that will extend the pension age, contain wages and cut into public services. (Photo by Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP Photo)

The Rio dry cargo ship that has ran aground during a storm in December 2018 in Kabardinka, Krasnodar Territory, Russia on August 11, 2020. The vessel has become a tourist attraction of the region. (Photo by Alexander Ryumin/TASS)