You are quite literally comparing apples to bananas.

Bananas don't keep. Apples can be kept in the proper environment for a year.

Bananas grow year-round in the tropical climates whence they are sourced. Most apples are sourced locally and only grow in late summer/early fall.

If I want to buy an apple in June, the only way to do it is to buy one that's several months old.

So noone would buy up a lot of the stock of a particular product to artificially inflate prices?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10682433

I was of course addressing the parents universal claim that noone buys perishables to stock pile.

FWIW the article refers to Anthony Ward, a dealer in cocoa, who purchased 15% of the worlds supply during a shortage and managed to inflate global prices (depending who you talk to, http://www.tradingvisions.org/content/choc-finger-offloads-h...) enough to sell on a large profit despite considerable wastage.

He's done it before too.

Nobody would ever do that.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/07/goldmans-sec...

But hoarding a perpetually renewable, perishable product? Doesn't seem likely.

Of course apples are kept for long times. 14 months seems iffy, but in order to sell apples all year round, you have to store them for many months. Most produce is sold this way, but apples are particularly good for storage. You can store apples in cardboard in a cool dry room of your own house for months.

Most produce is not sold this way. It is staggered by hemisphere to take advantage of the seasons. You'll get North American apples in the fall and south american apples during the spring. You may be able to store apples for a few weeks and possible a few months for heartier lines. But every minute it's not sold is money being lost in storage or wastage.