"Bonjour, and if any of you are the people who propositioned me over the weekend, I do not want to know, vraiment. Today, our topic is the stock market.

"The stock market is a strange and magical place where tiny, positively infinitesimal bits of companies, called stocks, are bought and sold. Because supply and demand of stock fluctuates as people buy and sell, the price of stocks can change in a matter of minutes. Currently, the market is down, as people try to offload their stocks and no one is buying, because the worldwide economy is enough to make you weep at the moment. Now, if you are smart about what you buy and when you buy and sell it, you can make quite a bit of money in the stock market. That is what I did. However, one big mistake can cost you everything. Your money, your house, everything. This is why it is important to not panic and sell stock at a stupid time. Many financial experts will suggest you should not put money into the stock market you will need within ten years; the market will generally go up over that long period, but if you suddenly need to pull money out in the short term, you may take a serious loss.

"For the rest of the class, we will discuss what kind of stocks might be good to invest in, given what you know of the stock market and of general events."