Here's Everything You Need to Know About "The Stalk Market" in 'Animal Crossing'

The stock market has never been as cute or as relaxing as it is in Nintendo game form. The social simulation game Animal Crossing: New Horizons makes a lot of the mundane and even grueling tasks of life pretty fun and adorable, from arranging furniture to gardening to, yes, trading stocks. Or stalks.

Instead of selling shares of blue chip companies, the game simulates the New York Stock Exchange with turnips. Yes, turnips. Here's everything you need to know about the turnip lady on Animal Crossing and the risky business of trading "stalk."

Every Sunday on Animal Crossing between the hours of 5 a.m. and 12 p.m., you will see a little pig with a runny nose walking around your island selling her wares. If you played earlier versions of the game, this minigame is familiar to you, only you dealt with Daisy's grandmother, Sow Joan of the eponymous Sow Joan's Stalk Market. (We love a good pun.)

Turnips are sold in groups of 10 and while you can eat them, it's not the best use of your money. Instead, you should hang onto them and check with Timmy and Tommy each day to see what the purchase price for turnips is that day. You have a week — that is until 5 a.m the following Sunday — to sell your stock before it rots, so there's some risk and time constraint involved if you want to turn a profit on your investment.

The key to making money on turnips is to buy at a low price and sell at a high price, but if you're new to the trading floor, you might not know what an attractive price on the buying or selling end is. Don't worry, we've got you.

Just as with stock prices, the going rate for turnips changes every day and can fluctuate throughout the day, so it's a good idea to check the price more than once a day. Typically, the cost per turnip ranges from 80 to 120 bells, but they can be lower than 50 and over 400 on a good day. 

In general, it's safest to buy turnips when the price is under 100. Anything higher and there's a high risk you won't even break even, let alone make money. Most of the time, Tuesday is the best day for selling, but if you purchased a particularly pricey batch, you may want to hold out for a surprise jump in price.

A word to the wise, though. Many gamers like to "time travel" in Animal Crossing — that is they manually change the date and time settings on their Switch to move forward and backward in time and date — to hack the system. This is beneficial if you've missed a window for an in-game character's visit to your island or to speed up construction. However, time travel will really hurt you when it comes to the "stalk market," because if you jump forward past the next Sunday, your turnips will automatically rot.

And while you can go forward any time before that Sunday to check stalk prices or do anything else you like, you have to sell your turnips before jumping back to the present. Any move backward in time after a jump forward will cause your turnips to spoil.

OK, so you've decided to play, but what are you supposed to do now, just carry around those turnips until the stalk price goes up? Well, we have bad news for those who are a little anal about how they arrange their houses on Animal Crossing. Unfortunately, you can't put your turnips in storage, so most traders just leave them in their home to keep their pockets free.

Another option is to bury them in your yard. They won't grow into plants the same way buried fruit grow into trees, and you can dig them up when you're ready to sell.

Burying turnips comes with the risk of plunder if you have visitors to your island, though, so indoors is safest. You can also create a fenced-in "silo" of sorts for your turnip stores if you're concerned about piracy. While you can move the fencing to gain access to your turnips whenever you want, visitors won't be able to get in.

Well, basically you lose all the money you invested, which is a bummer, but there is an upside to bug collectors. Rotten turnips attract ants and flies, which would otherwise never spawn, so if you're looking to add those specimens to the insect hall of your museum, that's one way to do it.

However, it's a small silver lining to taking a loss on your investment. But ask any finance bro on Wall Street and they'll tell you there's no great reward without great risks!