(http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d96/h0stile17/1000ofstock.jpg)
I bought $500 cash(cost £260) here in the UK 2 years ago to buy some bits a friend was bringing from the States,he posted them in the end and i paid him Paypal,the exchange rate has been to poor to change them back till recently,but when i did change them got £310 :D
I unloaded everything a couple months ago and put it all in CD's (not that the interest rate of CD's is worth anything, but at least I'm not losing money).
Maybe the market will start making steady improvements in a few months and I'll get back into it.
I don't usually have any stocks. Last year, I had a bit of temporary liquidity, so I bought 10k worth of Google and Apple. I sold it two months later for 16k. Good thing I did, because Apple is now below where I originally bought it.
My father's 401k lost $250k in the last quarter. Ouch.
Geof