I was born in the year of the dragon. I was always dreaming that one day I could visit the Great Wall of China, a giant dragon stretching over mountains and deserts, and walk on it. And this day had finally come. It was July 2019, and I was in Beijing, the capital of China. Standing in the front gate of Mutianyu, one of the best-preserved Great Wall sections in the Greater Beijing area, my body was full of excitement. I had been waiting so long to climb it. But getting to the Great Wall of China was not easy; I had to climb many stairs that seemed like a million steps. And since the Great Wall of China is on mountains, I had to ride a mountain cable car afterwards. And then came a bunch of other stairs. When I finally got to the Great Wall of China, I was tired and sweating from head to toe. I wanted to sit down and rest, but my excitement pushed me up and got me to start walking. Walking there was amazing! There were little holes in the brick walls that helped soldiers in those ancient times spy on their enemy and know that they were coming without being seen; the soldiers could also shoot arrows at the enemy through the holes and the enemy couldn’t shoot them successfully through those tiny holes. I saw and passed many fire towers that were once used to “message” soldiers in the next fire tower that enemy were coming, by making thick smoke during the day or lighting a fire during the night. The soldiers would see the light or the smoke and one by one, they would light every fire tower and prepare for the intrusion. I’d say that is a pretty safe and smart way of warning. When I left the Mutianyu Great Wall, I was exhausted. All I wanted then was to take a nice shower and go to bed. But I couldn’t wait for my next adventure to explore other sections of the Great Wall!
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
What is the Stock Market?
When you hear the words “stock market,” it sounds like a frightening mess that is impossible to make sense of. Bears, bulls, short, call options, IPO–what do all of these things mean? What is the point of the stock market? What is a stock anyway? Who is buying and who is selling? All of this may seem confusing, but in truth, the stock market is based on two fundamental principles: buy it low, sell it high, or sell it high, and buy it low. With that in mind, let’s dive in! What is Stock? Succinctly, a common stock is a share of a company (which is why stocks are also called shares). For example, if a company had one million shares, and you bought one share, you would own one millionth of a company. Another type of stock is preferred stock, which is less volatile (i.e. less likely to vary a lot in price) than common stock and has higher priority than common stock when paying dividends. Even though preferred stocks do not include voting rights, it still signifies ownership of a part of the company. So what does this ownership mean? Voting rights (only common stock): you get to decide on company matters. This is why shares are actually very important in companies; the more shares you have, the more decision-making power you have. This is why it is recommended for one person in a private company (typically the CEO) to hold at least 51% of the shares, so that decision-making can be faster and more streamlined. Dividends: There are two kinds of stocks, and each pays a different dividend (i.e. a part of the company profit). Common stock is not guaranteed a dividend–every quarter, the company can choose if they want to pay a dividend or not. Preferred stock, however, must pay a dividend every month or quarter. However, dividends are often not a reliable way to make money fast, especially with common stock. The most common use of stock is to buy it at a low price, say $10, then sell it at $30. While this kind of price increase is highly unlikely (Apple stock only increased about 130% over the course of the past year), assuming it were to happen, you would turn a profit of $20. The hard part is predicting whether the stock will rise or fall. A company first sells stock during its IPO, which is the first time the company allows the public to acquire shares. This is known as the primary market. There are multiple motives behind this: To raise money. Billions of dollars can be raised at IPOs. To allow public ownership. Going forward, the company must satisfy popular demand, and there is no easier way to do that than allowing the public to get a say in company matters. Buy or Sell? So when should you buy, and when should you sell? If you believe a stock’s price will go up, you should buy the stock as soon as possible. For example, if you believe the stock price will increase from $10 to $20, you probably want to buy it when it still costs $10, rather than wait for it to increase to $15, to maximize profit. You should sell when you think the price will go down. For example, say you bought this stock at $10, and it has now reached $20 but is predicted to drop down to $15. In order to maximize profit, you should try to sell it at the highest price ($20) rather than a lower price ($15). Of course, it is hard to predict price increase and decrease. Here’s a simple guide on how to get a relatively good idea on what the price of the stock will look like in the future: How is this company doing? If it’s suffering a lawsuit, for example, less people will be likely to give this company money or buy its products and earnings will be reduced, thus driving down the stock price. Are they going to have any new sources of revenue in the near future? I remember Intel stock dropped because they had delayed the release of their new computer chip. Many people sold their stocks on that day, driving down the price by a lot (about 17%). What is its potential for growth? Is it already a mature company that won’t grow rapidly anymore? Or is it likely to develop in the future? Do a SWOT analysis: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. Look at current stock trends (i.e. stock price over past year, global economy performance, industry performance, national economy performance). Another thing to keep in mind (this part is fully my opinion): the more money you invest, the shorter you should keep it in the stock market. Why? Imagine you invest $200 in the stock market. Over the course of half a year, the stock grows by 5%, and at the end of the year, it increases by 10%. If you had sold your stock in the middle of the year, you would have earned $10. But if you wanted to make $10 when only investing $100, you would have to wait until the end of the year. So what’s the downside of investing more? Well, if the price dipped by 10% instead at the end of the year, if you had invested $200, you would be losing $10. On the contrary, if you have invested $100, you would only be losing $5. Hence, keeping a lot of money in the stock market at once can be dangerous, and it is usually a better idea to sell stock at first gain, in my opinion. Advanced: Call Options, Margin Accounts Earlier, I said a way to make money in the stock market was to buy low and sell high. But what about selling high, then buying low? At first, this seems absurd: how can you sell stock without buying it first? It turns out, this can be accomplished with something called a margin
How Stories Work-Writing Workshop #3: Lightness
An update from the third Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the Workshop held on Saturday May 1, plus some of the output published below Lightness is a “lightening of language whereby meaning is conveyed through a verbal texture that seems weightless, until the meaning itself takes on the same rarefied consistency.” -Italo Calvino “My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language” -Italo Calvino For this week’s Writing Workshop, Conner first asked us to consider his original lecture of Good vs. Evil (now split in to two parts) as “Lightness vs. Heaviness,” this week’s focus being Lightness. In order to introduce the two modes, Conner offered a primary juxtaposition of Don Quixote and Hamlet Don Quixote being the quintessential example of Lightness, and Hamlet the quintessential example of Heaviness. “Heavy” characters were noted to be brooding, philosophical, intense, opaque, emotionally closed, and characterized as scheming and calculating; on the other hand, “light” characters were noted be agile, quick, cunning, witty, lighthearted, whimsical, emotionally open, and characterized by action. At this point of the lecture we moved into strictly discussing lightness, first focusing on the character of Perseus, who “moves according to the pattern of the wind and clouds” as an embodiment of lightness. Peter Pan and Robin Hood were also discussed as iterations of Perseus. Next, using Milton’s funny and charismatic figure of Satan in Paradise Lost, we discussed how a quote on quote “evil” character could embody lightness, too. Another example of a character embodying lightness was Scheherezade from A Thousand and One Nights, as we noted her ability to think quickly on her feet and tell stories, and the fact that the stories she told were in themselves examples of Lightness—stories about flying carpets, winged horses, genies, magic, love and romance, and about characters like her: witty, smooth, fast talking characters of action. Following our discussion of Lightness in characters, we moved into a discussion of Lightness in painting, music and literature, beginning with three paintings: Magritte’s The Castle of Pyrenees, Malevich’s White on White, and Turner’s Norham Castle, Sunrise. We also listened to Mozart’s “Piano Concerto No. 21 and Stan Getz’s “The Girl from Ipanema” to set a mood of Lightness. Finally, we discussed the Lightness evident in the haikus of Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa, William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow,” and Gertrude Stein’s poem, “A Dog.” The Challenge: First answer what “lightness” means to you. Write one of the following prompts: 1) Write about a character who exemplifies lightness; 2) Write a story that makes the reader feel “light;” 3) Write a description of a place that uses all the elements of lightness we discussed in class (lighthearted, whimsical, effortless, or emotionally open). The Participants: Emma, Josh, Svitra, Georgia, Liam, Helen, Sophie, Anya, Simran, Jackson, Sena, Sinan, Olivia, Aditi, Lucy, Harine, Isolde, Audrey, Alice, Sasha, Noa, and Julia. Emma Hoff, 9Bronx, NY Fear of Drowning Emma Hoff, 9 I was flying. It felt like I was floating on the water, but this time without sinking in, without coming up coughing and spitting. I didn’t know how to fly, but I didn’t know how to swim either. Flying was easier, though, because when the wind lifted me up, it didn’t feel like a hurricane. It didn’t feel like a menacing and strong wind, because it was lightly tossing me onto the fluffiest air ever, and suddenly I was floating. I was hoping somewhere my family would be floating. And I knew they probably were somewhere, flying, feeling the most comfortable they had ever felt. And as the wind carried me away, I fell asleep. I woke up, and there was no more soft air. I was in the hurricane again, and I was being swirled and tossed, like fruit in a blender. Somehow, I was enjoying it, because while I was floating, a tiny pocket of my brain had been thinking, This isn’t right. This isn’t real. And when I stopped floating, when I just started being tossed around in the hurricane I realized that if the flying wasn’t real, then my family was probably gone. Helpless. Scared. And here I was, unable to help them. And then I was falling. The hurricane tossed me towards the ground and I was sailing down… until I stopped. And I realized I was with the sun. And it was real, even though it seemed like it wasn’t. And the sun said, “Are you lost?” And I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell the sun that I wasn’t lost, that a stupid hurricane had taken me away from my family. But I couldn’t speak. The sun somehow tossed me inside of it, and when I was inside I saw infinite space. And a lot of people. Everyone. My family, my friends, people I didn’t know. And then we were pushed through the other side of the sun, and we seemed to be in our world. I suddenly forgot about the trials of the hurricane, and how I was just tossed into the sun. I didn’t care, because at that moment I was happy. And I felt like I was floating… for real. Isolde Knowles, 9New York, NY 10 Days Isolde Knowles, 9 10 days. That was how long I’d been in heaven. Heaven was just like people thought of it as. The whole area is up in the clouds above all the souls still tethered down there. Yet still I yearn for the sense of unpredictability you have on earth. And now I start to wonder if I’m thinking about this wrong. Maybe that tether that keeps you down there isn’t stopping you but saving you. Heaven is a beautiful hell. Aditi Nair, 13Midlothian, VA Fly Aditi Nair, 13 Bouncing off the white fluffs, she went into the air. Gliding and soaring with the expressionless winds. Gliding
