What would you do in this situation??

Hello and welcome Sleepaholic! :welcome Your dilemna has been stated by a number of people in the past. Almost everyone with a relatively small amount of money to invest focuses on "low cost stocks" because of the attractiveness of their price. However, as investors, we are looking for the highest rate of return for our investment, regardless of the price paid per share. It is a fact that took me a couple years to get in my head, despite reading it in books over and over again. But let's illustrate. If you buy $5,000 worth of shares in a $7 stock, you would own around 710 shares. If you buy $5,000 worth of shares in a $35 stock you would own around 140 shares. Yes, 710 shares is a larger number than 140, but $5,000 is still equal to $5,000. If you gain 35% on either stock, your investment account will still be worth $6,750. There's no changing this simple fact and there's no need to have a bias towards "cheap stocks" just because you can buy more of them. Generally a stock selling below $10 is doing so for a reason. Notably, the company is having major operational issues like high debt, slow sales, corrupt management, etc. If you have some strong inside info conerning how the company operates, you may have found a bargain, but in reality, in 9 out of 10 cases, you now own a cheap stock that percentage-wise is still going to underperform the market. Sorry my post was so long. In summary, you are better off owning less shares of a productiive company than more shares of an unproductive one. Your per-centage gain will be higher, and that is all you are investing for.

It isn't important what is the stock-price but what is the long-term total return of the stock. If you' ve 5000 $ they're 5000 $ and you can hold 10 stocks or 1000 stocks, it isn't important. Abaut the stocks I'm quite sure MBNA is a good investment, but I also think that Wal-Mart is overvalued.

Learn to love stocks above $25. You will be glad you did.

The above is good advice $5000 is $5000. I think the most important thing you should consider is how much risk are you willing to take, and how long are you planning on investing the money. If you are investing for the long run i would have to suggest a mutual fund, that way your money is well diversified (less risk) even though you only have $5000 to invest. If you are trying to make quick money then you can invest in anything from a penny stock to a bigger company like Huffy that you think is currently undervalued. Just understand that this give you greater risk of losing your money. Also, as was stated earlier, predicting stock moves becasue of past stock moves is not the best way to value a stock. Take a look at some Mutual Fund performances of the last year i think you will be surpriced how much some made. WAIT, forget all that....Your 21!!! take that money to Vegas!!!