This is so hard to read. It's understandable that the character(s) speak that way, but it is certainly not how you write a story. Maybe I am taking it too seriously because my goal is to have a novel published in the future and maybe this is simple a short story . . . but using actual numbers (5 versus five), and not spelling out words (such as using 'u', rather than y-o-u) makes a story much harder to read and enjoy. I had a hard time focusing on the story due to this.... Just being honest. :)

I'm able to follow the story, however the way it is written is just . . . sloppy. Too many of the sentences could be drawn out a bit more, made more interesting, with description. Also, try using a thesaurus - repetitive words make things so much more difficult to read. There are grammar mistakes as well, such as in the last sentence: it should be meth-head Mike had fallen asleep, not Mike fell asleep. All of these things make the story hard to follow and read.

I'm impressed. . . . I knew nothing of stocks, and learned quite a bit, which says a lot. . . it is also well written and easy to read. I'm sure I could have tried to read script about stocks in a magazine or essay and understood very little had the writer assumed the reader(s) already knew about the subject. It's nice that you wrote this under the assumption that you were teaching, instead of spouting information at a trade-educated public.

I like that you are descriptive. So many authors are not descriptive enough anymore, so much so that it's hard to picture the story in your head, which - to me - is one of the main reasons I read, that I can picture the story in my head in a way that fits what the author is saying, but also in my own way. The only thing that I was confused with is I wasn't sure which parts were about whom. There was the one part that clearly had 'Rose' before it, and another that clearly had 'Lilly' but the r...