The Monkey Business

Once upon a time, there lived a lot of monkeys near a  remote village. One day a very rich merchant came to the village to buy these monkeys! He announced at the village market square that he would buy the monkeys at $100 each. passers-by, villagers thought the merchant to be insane.

They thought how can a reasonable person buy stray monkeys at $100 each?

Yet, some smart ones caught some monkeys and gave it to this merchant and he gave $100 for each monkey. 

This news spread like wildfire and people caught monkeys and sold it to the merchant.

After a few days, the merchant announced that he would buy monkeys at $200 each. The lazy villagers also ran around to catch the remaining monkeys!

They sold the remaining monkeys at 200 each. Then the merchant announced that he would buy monkeys at 500 each!

The villagers start to lose sleep! … They caught six or seven monkeys, which was all that was left, and got 500 each.

The villagers were waiting anxiously for the next announcement.

Then the merchant announced that he was going home for a week. And when he returns, he will buy monkeys at 1000 each!

He asked his employee to take care of the monkeys he bought. 

He was alone taking care of all the monkeys in a cage. The merchant went home.

The villagers were very sad as there were no more monkeys left for them to sell it at $1000 each.

Then the employee told them that he would sell some monkeys for 700 each secretly.

This news spread like fire. Since the merchant buys monkeys at 1000 each, there is a 300 profit for each monkey.

Now guess what! The next day, villagers made a queue near the monkey cage. The employee sold all the monkeys at 700 each.  The rich bought monkeys in big lots.  The poor borrowed money from moneylenders and also bought monkeys!

The villagers took care of their monkeys & waited for the merchant to return.

But nobody came! … Then they ran to the employee…

But he has already left too!

The villagers then realized that they had bought the useless stray monkeys at 700 each and were unable to sell them!