While watching the 1998 movie "You've Got Mail" there was a comment made by Jean Stapleton that the store owner did not have to worry about her finances because "I bought Intel" (sold in 1978 for $0.11 per share and split four times before the movie was released.  At the time of the movie Intel was selling for around $20.00 and paying a quarterly dividend of $0.75 per share.  If she bought Intel in 1978 and invested $1,100.00 plus the commission she would have 10,000 shares of stock.  In the movie she would have 120,000 shares of stock (in 1987 it split giving her 3 shares for every 2 shares she had for a new total of 15,000 shares and then it split 3 more times 2 shares for every share you had so she went to 30,000, next split 60,000 shares and the final split 120,000). Note it split twice more after the movie 2:1 so her new total is 480,000 shares.  Back to the movie.  In the movie her intel stock was worth (with a price around $20.00 per share and paying a dividend of $0.75 per share)  $240,000 and receiving a quarterly dividend of $90,000 for 3 quarters and $12,000 for the fourth quarter.  All of that for an investment of $1,100 20 years ago and doing nothing with it.  In 1978 I was going back to college to earn a Masters Degree, if only I had invested $1,10.00 in intel I would be sitting pretty today - but I digress.  It is easy to play the game backwards because we know the outcome. 

With Goodle portfolio you can play the game in real time.  To start playing you have to have a google account.  Simply sign up for gmail and you are set to go.  After you sign into google you click on Your Account and then on finance and finally portfolio.  You are ready to start playing the Investing Game.  It will ask for you to name your portfolio I named mine the Investing Game and I deposited "$10,000 in cash".  If you were really investing you could sign up with an on line broker and deposit money on a regular basis into a money market account, earning interest, until you were ready to start investing.  You could also do regular savings to an on line Bank (make sure they are FDIC Insured), these are easy to put money into but it takes an effort on your part to get it out - easy to save difficult to spend impulsively.  (I would research several different brokers and see what they charge for commission and what services they offer.  More on that in another hub page.)  We will start with $10,000 for your investing.  To deposit the cash into your google account simply click on cash on the ADD line.  A row of boxes will appear for you to enter the information.

How do you go about selecting what to invest in is the next step.  You might want to check out the Standard & Poor's 500 Index which is the top 500 American companies based on Capital value of the company.  Another list of stocks is the Dow Jones Industrial Average.  After you look at some of these companies and check out the price per share of stock using the google Get Quote search (type in the ticker symbol or the company name) and it will give you the current price, and a graph showing the movement for the past few days.  You can also click on the one month, year to date, 1 year, 5 year, 10 year and max which takes you back as far as google has records. You can see how this stock performed over the years and how often they pay dividend, if they do pay.  In the upper right hand part of the graph is a category called dividend which will tell you the amount paid for the last declared dividend.  Google will also give you the current news on the company for you to review, and in some cases there are discussion by people.  There are some people who are paid to promote a stock in these discussion forums so a word of caution.  Now that you have decided to invest in a company decide how much of your cash you want to invest and click on the ADD section and this time click on transaction.  You decide that you want to buy some General Electric Stock (GE) because you like the diversity of the company and you use their products.  You enter the ticker symbol (GE), choose if you will buy or sell (buy), the number of shares (50), the date, the per share price (today's quote) and the commission (most general service on line brokers charge about $12.99 so that is what I would suggest using) and any notes you wish to make such as this stock pays a dividend or sell when it is doubled in value or where you got the idea so you can track if the advice is good or not. (Make sure you click the little box that says deduct from cash, this will let you know how much cash you have to invest.  You click add to cash when you sell a stock)  Then click Add to Portfolio.  Now you see the name of the company, the symbol, current price, change (from the opening price for the day) number of scares, Cost basis (cost of the stock plus the commission), Market Value (what you would get for the stock if you sold it now, you would have to pay a commission again when you sell), you then get the gain or loss, the % of gain or loss, the gain or loss for the day and finally the overall gain or loss.  Now every time you log into your google portfolio you will see the stock and the current price as well as how the stock is doing today and overall.  At the bottom of the chart you will see the Cost amount total (your total Investment) and the current market value of your investments plus you cash.  If this number is above $10,000 your investments are growing.

If we want to see the results of the "You've Got Mail" example you would enter INTC the symbol for Intell the date Feb 10 1978, the shares 10000, the price $0.11,  and the commission $12.99.  You would have to go in and edit your transactions to show the splits and when they occurred.  You would do the same thing if you decided to reinvest your dividends (buying stock rather than taking the cash - some brokers charge a slight fee, and others do not, to reinvest your dividends).  in our example you would enter the increased number of share each time it split or you reinvested.  With just the splits she would now own 480,000 shares of Intel stock worth, $7,243,200.00, and paying a quarterly dividend of $67,200.  All that on a, $1112.99, investment 31 years ago. 

By using the Google Portfolio you can track your "Stock Purchases" and see if you are making good investments.  For most companies you will not have to wait that long to see if it was a good investment or not.  One thing to point out is that you will be receiving many financial emails, which is why I only use my google account for investment and don't share the email with others.  Playing the "game" will allow your to see if the advice you are getting from some of the Free newsletters are worth it or not.  You may choose to subscribe to some online invest newsletters.  Most will let you have a trial period of time before you have to pay.  You can test their investment strategies.  Sometimes you will get a tip from a friend such as it seem like everyone we know is buying a Blackberry Smart Phone.  You think should I invest or not.  You start doing research on Smart phones and you find a company that makes the chip for several smart phone brands and it has doubled sales in the last 6 months.  You think that most of the people you know do not have them but are talking about buying one.  You then decide to "invest" a small amount in the company.    Remember Intel sold only component parts and not a finished product.   This will allow you to see if your research is doing what it should or if you need to do things differently or rely on different sources.  One thing to remember it is always a good time to invest in the market and you can make money in good times and bad. 

When you feel comfortable with how you have been "investing" and are ready to get your feet wet you will have some knowledge of what you are doing and if your information is good.  If you started putting something away in a savings account on a regular basis when you started playing the game you will have something to invest when you are ready.  The only advice I will give you is to invest only what you can afford to lose.  Don't do like one person I talked to who got a computer for Christmas and tried on line trading, back during the dot com era people were making money day trading.  His first few trades made money so he cashed in his retirement account and in 6 months he lost over 2/3 of it and had to go back to work just to make ends meet.   If you look at Intel as an example.  In 2000 it is a stock that does not seem to stop going up and in April 2000 it is selling for $57.68, and people were buying anything connected with computers.  One year later , April 2001, Intel was selling for $23.62, per share - or less than 1/2 it's price the year before.  People who did their research knew that Intel was a strong company and waited out the up and down cycles of the market.  You only make or lose money when you sell your stock (or if the company goes bankrupt).  If you are thinking of investing in the stock market, play the game first and see if you are making sound decisions, read advice from others and see if you like what they say, Study companies and see if people are buying their products and follow the news and watch for signs from the market.  Do your stocks go up or down on the report of employment statics or consumer spending.  Remember there is always going to be an Intel just around the corner - all you have to do is find it.