At those amounts, personally, I don't think it's worth it. I'm telling you this out of personal experience. I have tried trading stocks as you've described. Small amount of shares at higher prices as well as larger amounts of shares at lower prices. Neither nets you enough profit because you don't have enough invested. For example, if you had 50 shares of company A at $50 per share, for a total of $2500 - even if the share prices go up 10%, your gain is only $250. A 10% up-swing is not uncommon but usually good-news driven. It could easily swing the other way if there's bad news. In the end, you will win some and you will lose some, which may or may not be worth it for you. I think it's not only less risky, but less stressful to invest in index funds, especially if you can catch one on a dip. I'm relatively new myself. In my own trading experience, I think 36 of my first 40 transactions were all for gains. Unfortunately, one of my losses were huge and completely wiped out all my gains.

On the other hand, if you had $25,000 to trade, even a 4% swing in a stock price will net you a $1,000 gain. I'll take that any day. If you look at a list of 100 stocks, a 4% swing occurs on a daily basis.

There doesn't seem to be a very clear choice. It makes more sense to me to keep the commission cost per share as low as possible and that would suggest you buy more shares and fewer companies. It is also true that the amount of time you will need to invest in following each company is more cost effective if you have 100 shares as opposed to 10. I'd be a whole lot more concerned about deciding if you will be a trader or investor and what the basis or bases will be for your investments.

I am currently doing a study, early results show investing in stocks and horse racing - the ones gambling direct at horse racing make better returns lol.

It is of course ALL GAMBLING, and my study is not yet complete, but my advice would be to spread the risk, and also at the same time IF you can put your money into property. That could cover most if not all loses made in such high risk investments.

Mutual funds and ETFs are a lot less risky. I prefer investing in those and especially in those that pay good dividends. You can have the dividends buy more shares or you can take your dividends in cash.

I am in my late 20s and over the years have saved a large amount of money investing in vanguard mutual funds (of which i have several). I have recently taken interest in investing in individual stocks, for both educational and growth purposes. I feel I still have much to learn (and more cash to save) before I go out investing $2000+ in large lots of one individual company.

I am curious to get some opinions on whether it is worth it to buy, say, 10 shares of a stock that trades for $50 (paying a flat $5 per trade) and spread my workable cash (which I am keeping on the conservative side of $3k set aside for individual stock purchases) over a several (4-6) companies, or save up the cash and invest large sums in two or three companies.

My question stems from the fact that, at $5 per trade, it might make more sense to buy large lots to get my "money's worth", though this benefit is weighed against the risk of only investing in one company.

Really appreciate your feedback!