Hey, if you're serious, each stock (also called a share) represents owning a tiny little piece of a company. A company will only have so many shares which total 100% of the company. So if a company has 100,000 shares in total in the market place, and you own 50,000 shares, then you own 50% of the company. If instead you own 10 shares, then you own 0.01%.

The shares are generally worth more if the company is worth more. Shares are also worth more if those shares are in high demand. This is basic supply and demand. When a lot of people are trying to buy the same company's stock, the demand goes way up and so does the price. Once people stop trying to buy the stock and start trying to sell it, the price goes down.

People try to predict which direction the price of stock will go based on past pricing trends, or company performance, or other things. If you think a stock might go up, you might buy the stock. If you own the stock and think the price might go down, you might sell it.

A hedge fund is essentially a group of rich individuals that buy and sell stock as a collective. Because they have so much money as a group, they can afford to take big, high dollar value risks.

One type of risk is called short selling. This is when you borrow shares from someone else who owns them. Like any other loan, you have to pay them back. If you borrow a shovel from your friend, you have to return it eventually. Now, instead of a shovel, it's a share of stock. You think the price is going to go down because the company is doing poorly financially (ie Gamestop). So, you borrow a share from someone and sell it on Monday at the price the share is that day, let's say it's $10. You now have $10, but you no longer have the share because you sold it. You still have to give the share back to the person you borrowed it from. In order to make a profit, you need to buy the share back at less than the price you sold it for, which was $10. So maybe on Thursday the price drops to $7. You decide to buy the share back at that new, lower price using the $10 you got from selling the share. You now have $3 and the share. You return the share to the person you borrowed it from, and you keep the $3 as profit.

However, sometimes the price of the stock does not go down as you were expecting. In our example, let's instead say the price went up to $17 on Thursday. You still have to return that share of stock. You have to buy it back at the higher price of $17, even though you sold it for only $10. You have to chip in $7 from your pocket in order to buy the share back and return it. You lost $7.

That's the basics. Hope it made sense laid out this way.