Eliza, like most of that caterwauling, hand-slapping crowd who migrated between the Dam and the Exchange, did not have enough money to trade in actual V.O.C. shares. When she was flush, she bought and sold ducat shares, and when she wasn't, she bought and sold options and contracts to buy or sell them. Strictly speaking, ducat shares didn't even exist. They were splinters, fragments, of actual V.O.C. shares. They were a fiction that had been invented so that people who weren't enormously wealthy could participate in the market.