system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What the hell do we need the stock market for, /explainlikeimfive

I really cant figure it out how it makes things better. 



**edit (thanks to hufman)**: Do you remember when you started your lemonade stand? Well, you didn't have any money then, so you had to ask us to help start out your shiny new business! This is called Venture Capital! We gave you some money, with the hope that you'll turn it into a big business and pay us back and some more!

Now that you have a big profitable lemonade stand, you want to start up other lemonade stands down the street! However, you don't quite have enough money, so you have to start asking to borrow money from other people. We already gave you as much as we have, so you have to ask others. Now, you could go door-to-door and ask everyone to help out, but that would take a long time and might not even work. So, people invented the stock market to help out! You would go to the stock market and shout out there that you want money and will sell a small piece of your company! Anyone who gives you money gets a small piece of the profits!

Then, some people might not want to keep a piece of your company, maybe it's becoming winter and nobody wants lemonade anymore. What those people will do is go to the stock market and tell everyone that they have a piece of your company and will sell it to anyone who asks with the right price! The person who buys that piece, or share, of your company will then get some of the profits, while the person who sold it has money that he can use to buy a piece of a different company.

The price that people sell it for is completely random!! Initially, you set the price for the initial sale (Initial Public Offering) of your company, but once people start buying and sharing shares of your company, you can't do anything to control the price. So, that means that if people think your company is going to do really well, they'll be willing to pay more for those shares, and if it's winter, then people will pay less for them. But, it's all up to what people think will happen! This could be some random bit of news about your company like an announcement of a new lemonade stand, or related information like a drop in price of lemons, or something as silly as people selling your company for no reason!

However, to make all this magic happen, there has to be a central place where people can trade shares of your company, and so they invented stock markets!
gpt
Do you remember when you started your lemonade stand? Well, you didn't have any money then, so you had to ask us to help start out your shiny new business! This is called Venture Capital! We gave you some money, with the hope that you'll turn it into a big business and pay us back and some more!

Now that you have a big profitable lemonade stand, you want to start up other lemonade stands down the street! However, you don't quite have enough money, so you have to start asking to borrow money from other people. We already gave you as much as we have, so you have to ask others. Now, you could go door-to-door and ask everyone to help out, but that would take a long time and might not even work. So, people invented the stock market to help out! You would go to the stock market and shout out there that you want money and will sell a small piece of your company! Anyone who gives you money gets a small piece of the profits!

Then, some people might not want to keep a piece of your company, maybe it's becoming winter and nobody wants lemonade anymore. What those people will do is go to the stock market and tell everyone that they have a piece of your company and will sell it to anyone who asks with the right price! The person who buys that piece, or share, of your company will then get some of the profits, while the person who sold it has money that he can use to buy a piece of a different company.

The price that people sell it for is completely random!! Initially, you set the price for the initial sale (Initial Public Offering) of your company, but once people start buying and sharing shares of your company, you can't do anything to control the price. So, that means that if people think your company is going to do really well, they'll be willing to pay more for those shares, and if it's winter, then people will pay less for them. But, it's all up to what people think will happen! This could be some random bit of news about your company like an announcement of a new lemonade stand, or related information like a drop in price of lemons, or something as silly as people selling your company for no reason!

However, to make all this magic happen, there has to be a central place where people can trade shares of your company, and so they invented stock markets!