What is an “International Equity”?
Assuming you're in the United States, then International Equity is an equity from a different country.  These stocks or stock funds (which reside in a foreign country) are broken out seperately becuase they are typically influenced by a different set of factors than equities in the United States: foreign currency swings, regional events and politics of various countries. International means from all over the world. In the U.S. A Foreign Equity fund would be non-US stocks.  There's an odd third choice I'm aware of, a fund of US companies that derive their sales from overseas, primarily. International equity are considered shares of companies, which are headquartered outside the United States, for instance Research in Motion (Canada), BMW (Germany), UBS (Switzerland). Some investors argue that adding international equities to a portfolio can reduce its risk due to regional diversification.
It depends on your equity(assets -  liabilities). If you have a lot of equity, banks will be happy to lend you money because they now they can always seize your assets. If you don't have a lot of equity another option is to go to hard money lenders. They charge high rates and some of them lend-to-own, but is an option. And consider what Pete said, you might be a little optimistic. We don't know what his 10 O&amp;G stocks are, if they're international companies, a war could move them in either direction. If they're North American, they could benefit from a positive price movement, but that also depends on the markets they sell into. A war doesn't guarantee all O&amp;G equities will rise. Do developing country equities have a higher return and/or lower risk   than emerging market equities?  Generally in finance you get payed more for taking risk.  Riskier stocks over the long run return more than less risky bonds, for instance.  Developing market equity is expected to give less return over the long run as it is generally less risky than emerging market equity.  One way to see that is the amount you pay for one rupee/lira/dollar/euro worth of company earnings is fewer rupees/lira and more dollars/euros. when measured in the emerging market's currency?  This makes this question interesting.  Risky emerging currencies like the rupee tend to devalue over time against less risky currencies euro/dollars/yen like where most international investment ends up, but the results are rather wild.  Think how badly Brazil has done recently and how relatively well the rupee has been doing.   This adds to the returns (roughly based on interest rates) of foreign stocks from the point of view of a emerging market investor on average but has really wild variations. Do you have data for this over a long timeframe (decades), ideally for multiple countries? Not really, unfortunately.  Good data for emerging markets is a fairly new phenomenon and even where it does exist decades ago it would have been very hard to invest like we can now so it likely is not comparable. Does foreign equity pay more or less when measured in rupees (or other   emerging market currency)? Probably less on average (theoretically and empirically) all things included though the evidence is not strong, but there is a massive amount of risk in a portfolio that is 85% in a single emerging market currency.  Think about if you were a Brazilian and needed to retire now and 85% of your portfolio was in the Real.  International goods like gas would be really expensive and your local currency portfolio would seem paltry right now.  If you want to bet on emerging markets in the long run I would suggest that you at least spread the risk over many emerging markets and add a good chunk developed to the mix. As for investing goals, it's just to maximize my return in INR, or maximize my risk-adjusted return. That is up to you, but the goal I generally recommend is making sure you are comfortable in retirement.  This usually involves looking for returns are high in the long run, but not having a ton of risk in a single currency or a single market.  There are reasons to believe a little bias toward your homeland is good as fees tend to be lower on local investments and local investments tend to track closer to your retirement costs, but too much can be very dangerous even for countries with stronger currencies, say Greece. "Couple of clarifications to start off: Index funds and ETF's are essentially the same investments.  ETF's allow you to trade during the day but also make you reinvest your dividends manually instead of doing it for you.  Compare VTI and VTSAX, for example.  Basically the same returns with very slight differences in how they are run.  Because they are so similar it doesn't matter which you choose. Either index funds and ETF's can be purchased through a regular taxable brokerage account or through an IRA or Roth IRA.  The decision of what fund to use and whether to use a brokerage or IRA are separate. Whole market index funds will get you exposure to US equity but consider also diversifying into international equity, bonds, real estate (REITS), and emerging markets.  Any broker can give you advice on that score or you can get free advice from, for example, Future Advisor.  Now the advice: For most people in your situation, you current tax rate is currently very low.  This makes a Roth IRA a very reasonable idea.  You can contribute $5,500 for 2015 if you do it before April 15 and you can contribute $5,500 for 2016.  Repeat each year.  You won't be able to get all your money into a Roth, but anything you can do now will save you money on taxes in the long run.  You put after-tax money in a Roth IRA and then you don't pay taxes on it or the gains when you take it out. You can use Roth IRA funds for college, for a first home, or for retirement. A traditional IRA is not recommended in your case.  That would save you money on taxes this year, when presumably your taxes are already low. Since you won't be able to put all your money in the IRA, you can put the rest in a regular taxable brokerage account (if you don't just want to put it in a savings account).  You can buy the same types of things as you have in your IRA.   Note that if your stocks (in your regular brokerage account) go up over the course of a year and your income is low enough to be in the 10 or 15% tax bracket and you have held the stock for at least a year, you should sell before the end of the year to lock in your gains and pay taxes on them at the capital gains rate of 0%. This will prevent you from paying a higher rate on those gains later.  Conversely, if you lose money in a year, don't sell. You can sell and lock in losses during years when your taxes are high (presumably, after college) to reduce your tax burden in those years (this is called ""tax loss harvesting""). Sounds like crazy contortions but the name of the game is (legally) avoiding taxes.  This is at least as important to your overall wealth as the decision of which funds to buy. Ok now the financial advisor.  It's up to you.  You can make your own financial decisions and save the money but it requires you putting in the effort to be educated.  For many of us, this education is fun.  Also consider that if you use a regular broker, like Fidelity, you can call up and they have people who (for free) will give you advice very similar to what you will get from the advisor you referred to.  High priced financial advisors make more sense when you have a lot of money and complicated finances.  Based on your question, you don't strike me as having those.  To me, 1% sounds like a lot to pay for a simple situation like yours." "Not to detract from the other answers at all (which are each excellent and useful in their own right), but here's my interpretation of the ideas: Equity is the answer to the question ""Where is the value of the company coming from?""  This might include owner stakes, shareholder stock investments, or outside investments.  In the current moment, it can also be defined as ""Equity = X + Current Income - Current Expenses"" (I'll come back to X). This fits into the standard accounting model of ""Assets - Liabilities = Value (Equity)"", where Assets includes not only bank accounts, but also warehouse inventory, raw materials, etc.; Liabilities are debts, loans, shortfalls in inventory, etc.  Both are abstract categories, whereas Income and Expense are hard dollar amounts.  At the end of the year when the books balance, they should all equal out. Equity up until this point has been an abstract concept, and it's not an account in the traditional (gnucash) sense.  However, it's common practice for businesses to close the books once a year, and to consolidate outstanding balances.  When this happens, Equity ceases to be abstract and becomes a hard value: ""How much is the company worth at this moment?"", which has a definite, numeric value. When the books are opened fresh for a new business year, the Current Income and Current Expense amounts are zeroed out.  In this situation, in order for the big equation to equal out: Assets - Liabilities = X + Income - Expeneses the previous net value of the company must be accounted for.  This is where X comes in, the starting (previous year's) equity.  This allows the Assets and Liabilities to be non-zero, while the (current) Income and Expenses are both still zeroed out.  The account which represents X in gnucash is called ""Equity"", and encompasses not only initial investments, but also the net increase & decreases from previous years.  While the name would more accurately be called ""Starting Equity"", the only problem caused by the naming convention is the confusion of the concept Equity (X + Income - Expenses) with the account X, named ""Equity""." outstanding shares are the shares(regular shares) that are still tradable in the market, where the firm in question is listed. The term is primarily used to distinguish from shares held in treasury(treasury stock), which have been bought back(buybacks) from the market and aren't currently tradable in the market. Wikipedia is a bit more clearer and mentions the diluted outstanding shares(used for convertible bonds, warrants, etc) which is used to calculated diluted EPS. Efficient Frontier has an article from years ago about the small-cap and value premiums out there that would be worth noting here using the Fama and French data. Eugene Fama and Kenneth French (F/F) have shown that one can explain   almost all of the returns of equity portfolios based on only three   factors: market exposure, market capitalization (size), and   price-to-book (value). Wikipedia link to the factor model which was the result of the F/F research. "Because an equity option can be constructed at essentially any price by two willing counterparties on an exchange, there are not enough ISINs to represent the entire (i.e. infinite) option chain for even a single stock on a single expiration date.  As a result, ISINs are not generated for each individual possible options contract.  Instead the ISIN is used only to refer to the ""underlying"" symbol, and a separate formula is used to refer to the specific option contract for that symbol: So that code you pasted is not an ISIN but rather the standard US equity option naming scheme that you need to provide in addition to the ISIN when talking to your broker. Note that ISINs and formulas for referring to option contracts in other countries can behave quite differently.  Also, there are many countries and markets that don't need ISINs because the products in question only exist on a single exchange.  In those cases the exchange is pretty much free to make up whatever ID scheme it wants. P.S. Now I'm curious how option chains are identified for strike prices above $99,999.  I looked up the only stock I can think of that trades above that price (BRK.A), but it doesn't seem to have an option chain (or at least Google doesn't show it) ..."