The following is not a meme. Or is it? Whatever you may say of this work of art, its genius lies in the nature of the skewering of tradition for the benefit of cultural humor. You see, every year, mainly in Anglo cultures, people who celebrate Christmas then pay the mail delivery person a tip for a job well done. What job, you ask? Well, the job of delivering all of those Xmas presents in time for the big day. And so it goes that on Boxing Day, for consumers who received gifts bought in local shops, the tradition also includes rushing back to those stores, in order to trade them for preferred goods or refunds. While you may not take part in this habit, it is one that is growing year-on-year. The moment comes and goes quickly, as does any day, but on this day, like all bank holidays, the stock markets, the commodities markets and futures markets are closed in the leading capital capitols. Of course, some markets, especially those in Asia, remain fully open. Nevertheless, there are fewer investors trading on these days, and that is simply because they have less counterparts with which to trade. So, as it happens, on December 26, 2013, when this image first popped up in the options investors' news blog, the business pages were scantily clad with details of major market moves. And the reason for that is quite simple. Not only were most traders out for the day, so too were the journalists and editors who cover those same markets. Still, some investments were happening. For example, the foreign exchange currency markets. The Yen fell a little lower than the previous day, and even the US Dollar, the Euro, the GBP and the Aussie were all being traded, albeit lightly. So what's the moral of this comic view of this trading holiday? Well, maybe there just isn't one. Maybe it just pokes fun at a silly de facto tradition, in full color. Or maybe you have to come up with the answer to that yourself. It is certainly not the artist's job to explain every possible interpretation for every reader. However, any astute student of finance and the laws of economics can confirm that where there is a downtime, there is an equal and opposite uptime elsewhere. And so, when markets are sleeping where you are, then they are awake on the opposite side of the world.

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