458.9 - sure, that must be a mistake, Varnum Orangpoop thought to himself. His wife had warned him to go easy on Grandma Herweg's famous banana bread. She was right; the scales didn't lie. He actually weighed 458.9 pounds. But in Varnum's defense, he gained weight easily. Sometimes, he downright inflated over the course of a few weeks. Then again there were periods of extreme weight loss. His family had long since stopped doubting his health. Varnum had been to some of the smartest monkey doctors in the world, some of them even experts in Bananaology. He went so far as to consult an astrologer who was trying to predict the trend of his weight based on the Great Conjunction. Although the moment when Jupiter and Saturn were aligned in the sky was considered one of the most reliable predictors in the Monkeyverse, and Varnum was promised it worked eleven times out of nine, it ended up on the wrong side of history regarding his weight. The astrologer promised him that there was nothing to worry about when the Sun squared Uranus and that he could expect more forward motion when the Pisces Moon crossed Neptune. Two days later, Varnum suffered the fastest weight loss ever, even beating the pace during what his wife dubbed "The Great Deflation." Of course, everyone had a different explanation for his condition, and wild speculation about his "war on the waistline" made it into the mainstream media. Varnum gained notoriety in the secondary market when some apes started betting on his weight and an entire industry was developed to create tradeable instruments focused on the volatility of his belly.

Long time ago, it all started when he published "The First Primate Investor's Guide to the Railroad and Shipping Industry". Back then, the handcar was the most revolutionary invention in the Monkeyverse, allowing for the fast and safe transportation of bananas and passengers alike. It was Varnum's genius to bring clarity to the jungle of emerging transportation networks - the ape administration had not figured out standards for building railroad tracks. The logistics business was more of a gamble than a science, and Varnum set about compiling comprehensive information on the financial and operational state of the railway system. The "Poop's Manual" he co-edited with his son was soon bought by a company specializing in statistics. A few years later, "Quality Poop's" was born, a company that not only would bear part of Varnum's name, but was also, according to him, the source of his indisposition. Quality Poop's - or Q&P - began under Varnum's leadership to incorporate the aggregated wisdom of financial data into an investable product featuring the top 20 companies of the Monkeyverse. Varnum arrived at this number by dividing his own record of how many bananas he could eat for dinner by 5, which was the average number of days it took a banana to go from yellow to mellow. He called this the "Q&P 20 Banana Index". It was a huge hit and monkeys loved the concept. They started creating investable products based on what reflected the health of the monkey economy. However, the Index was put to the test just a few years after its launch. During the first significant decline, the Index lost almost 47% of its value in 93 days. Although trading was rough back then and monkeys were used to throwing poop and heavy objects at each other on the floors of the Chimpanzee Mercantile Exchange, it marked the beginning of a new era. Not just for the Index and the economy, but for Varnum, who also suffered and lost nearly half his body weight from stress.

From that moment on, it was a constant up and down in both the Index and Varnum's weight. However, the long-term trend was clearly pointing upwards. The peg that linked the monetary unit of one Cococoin to be exactly worth one banana limited the power of governments and banks. It established a "tasty" currency, as common apes called it. All two indicators went exponential after the President of the Monkeyverse abolished the Banana Standard. Both surpassed the magic number 100. The Index's rise was caused by the uncontrolled printing of Cococoins - and Varnum's waist-expansion until today by his third marriage to a famous monkey pastry chef.