What happened to GOOG-stock? Why isn't it 1.000 USD?
The stock split, it is similar to what happened to Apple a little while back. When Google split 2 to 1, it means that each share holder got 2 shares for each 1 share they had and each share was 1/2 the price.
"There isn't a single rate that works in both directions.  There are two rates, one for each direction.  So if $1 = 64.23 INR, you may find that 100 INR = $1.55.   In fact, it's even worse than that.  The ""rates"" are just the average values at which transactions occur.  What happens in the real world is that someone (presumably your bank in this instance) offers to sell 100 INR for some amount, perhaps $1.56.  Other traders may either accept this price or refuse to trade.  If they refuse to trade, the bank may accept one of their offers, perhaps $1.55.   Anyway, the answer to your question is that whomever does the actual conversion keeps the ""difference"".  Of course, they may then lose that money if the value falls before they sell.  More confusingly, either your bank or your friend's bank could do the conversion itself.  Either or both could hold balances in various currencies so that they don't have to rely on the vagaries of the exchange market.  This is called a money market account, and banks let their customers invest in them.   It is a bit more likely to be your bank that gets the money than your friend's bank.  Your friend's bank doesn't actually need to know that your account is in USD.  They just transfer the amount in INR.  It's your bank that has to convert that into USD to deposit in your account." You can always use those virtual/paper trading games/websites/apps instead of actually investing. They're completely free to use and you can use them to compete. You'll each create a portfolio of stocks and the game will simulate market conditions to see how your stocks would perform real-time.   It's a great way to learn how to invest, and discussing what happened/why _____ sector performed higher/etc. It's a great way to start.  If you're looking for a discussion-type thing, start off by reading the Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, and discuss amongst the club.  Frankly, I don't see why you can't do both, investing and discussing/learning.  Virtual Trading Websites: MarketWatch Virtual Stock Exchange  Apps: StockWars: Virtual Trading I'm sorry I guess what i meant to say was, what's the downside here? Why isn't everyone doing this, what am i missing? Someone clarified that i'm completely exposed to FX risk if I bring it back.   What if I am IN australia, how would I do this, short USD's? "The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is a Price-weighted index.  That means that the index is calculated by adding up the prices of the constituent stocks and dividing by a constant, the ""Dow divisor"".  (The value of the Dow divisor is adjusted from time to time to maintain continuity when there are splits or changes in the roster.)  This has the curious effect of giving a member of the index influence proportional to its share price.  That is, if a stock costing $100 per share goes up by 1%, that will change the index by 10 times as much as if a stock costing $10 per share goes up by the same 1%. Now look at the price of Google.  It's currently trading at just a whisker under $700 per share.  Most of the other stocks in the index trade somewhere between $30 and $150, so if Google were included in the index it would contribute between 5 and 20 times the weight of any other stock in the index.  That means that relatively small blips in Google's price would completely dominate the index on any given day.  Until June of 2014, Apple was in the same boat, with its stock trading at about $700 per share.  At that time, Apple split its stock 7:1, and after that its stock price was a little under $100 per share.  So, post-split Apple might be a candidate to be included in the Dow the next time they change up the components of the index.  Since the Dow is fixed at 30 stocks, and since they try to keep a balance between different sectors, this probably wouldn't happen until they drop another technology company from the lineup for some reason.  (Correction: Apple is in the DJIA and has been for a little over a year now.  Mea culpa.) The Dow's price-weighting is unusual as stock indices go.  Most indices are weighted by market capitalization.  That means the influence of a single company is proportional to its total value.  This causes large companies like Apple to have a lot of influence on those indices, but since market capitalization isn't as arbitrary as stock price, most people see that as ok.  Also, notice that I said ""company"" and not ""stock"".  When a company has multiple classes of share (as Google does), market-cap-weighted indices include all of the share classes, while the Dow has no provision for such situations, which is another, albeit less important, reason why Google isn't in the Dow.  (Keep this in mind the next time someone offers you a bar bet on how many stocks are in the S&P 500.  The answer is (currently) 505!) Finally, you might be wondering why the Dow uses such an odd weighting in its calculations.  The answer is that the Dow averages go back to 1896, when Charles Dow used to calculate the averages by hand.  If your only tools are a pencil and paper, then a price-weighted index with only 30 stocks in it is a lot easier to calculate than a market-cap-weighted index with hundreds of constituents. About the Dow Jones Averages. Dow constituents and prices Apple's stock price chart. The split in 2014 is marked.  (Note that prices before the split are retroactively adjusted to show a continuous curve.)" "You don't need to use a real stock like GLD.  You can just create a ""stock"" called something like ""1 oz Gold"" and buy and sell them as if they were shares.  It won't auto-update the price like GLD, but that's not a big deal to update manually once a month or so. I prefer to have accurate data that is correct at a particular point in time to having data that is 2-3% off, or that requires entering the ounces as 10x reality.  YMMV. This is very similar to how you track US Savings Bonds in Quicken (and might be described in the help under that topic.)" Merrill charges $500 flat fee to (I assume purchase) my untraded or worthless security. In my case, it's an OTC stock whose management used for a microcap scam, which resulted in a class action lawsuit, etc. but the company is still listed on OTC and I'm stuck with 1000s of shares. (No idea about the court decision) I heard a very smart business guy (prof from UPenn) tell us that GE's lack of focus (what does GE do?) probably hurt the stock price.  He said that splitting the company up into multiple more focused companies would probably help overall value.  They'd be more susceptible to variations in the businesses though, so risk to the individual parts would go up.  So I don't know how right that guy was.  GE definitely can't seem to excite the market no matter how many times it tries to reinvent itself. Price, whether related to a stock or ETF, has little to do with anything.  The fund or company has a total value and the value is distributed among the number of units or shares.   Vanguard's S&P ETF has a unit price of $196 and Schwab's S&P mutual fund has a unit price of $35, it's essentially just a matter of the fund's total assets divided by number of units outstanding. Vanguard's VOO has assets of about $250 billion and Schwab's SWPPX has assets of about $25 billion. Additionally, Apple has a share price of $100, Google has a share price of $800, that doesn't mean Google is more valuable than Apple.  Apple's market capitalization is about $630 billion while Google's is about $560 billion.  Or on the extreme a single share of Berkshire's Class A stock is $216,000, and Berkshire's market cap is just $360 billion.   It's all just a matter of value divided by shares/units.