Sociologist Zhou Xiaozheng has a relatively straightforward understanding of the concept of money speculators: "It is understandable that young people want to be rich, but at present they are exhausted by wealth because most people are dissatisfied with reality and feel that there is little hope of getting rich through hard work." He believes that the huge gap between the rich and the poor and unfair social distribution are the real reasons for the wave of speculation.

College students who think that it is difficult to accumulate wealth quickly by hard work turn to investment or speculation in order to gain more wealth as soon as possible. Stock speculation, real estate speculation, gold speculation, calligraphy and painting speculation, foreign exchange speculation, futures speculation and fund speculation. Any way to accumulate wealth quickly belongs to the ranks of "speculating money". This new "ethnic group" is called "money speculators".