askchapo

Short answer is there is no money anywhere, until the stock is sold. Just an asking price people are willing to pay and a selling price people are willing to sell at.

It doesn't go anywhere since it was theoretical to begin with. Think of a video game. If you buy a game for $60, then resell it later for $30, technically you've lost $30. However, you could hold on to the game and maybe it becomes rare and you sell it later for $120 and turn a $60 profit!

Or, maybe the game's resale price dips to $30, but you don't sell it, then it later shoots up to $120 and you sell. When it was $30, you could misleadingly claim that you've "lost $30" on it, but you didn't really, since you still own the game and in this case you actually sold it for a profit later.

The gain/loss is only realized when you sell the game, so whether you'd consider yourself a winner or loser would entirely depend on when you sell and how much you sell it for. Still sucks to see the value go down when you own it though, since it decreases your chances of making a profit and means you'd need to hold on to it longer if you want to turn a profit.

The stock market value (and companies values) is what it would be worth if 100% of it was sold at the current going rate. In reality, selling something actually lowers the price a little since it increases supply, so if 100% of any company/market were sold on the open market in a short amount of time, the price of each share would tank hard and the actual sale price would be much much lower than the initial "value" or market cap.

There are ways to make money when a stock's price drops, puts and shorts are the two most common. But that's out of the scope of the question you're asking.