<prompt> Human: MBA here. Ive read a considerable amount on investingpersonal finance. Enough to know that you should not buy individual stocks. Mutual funds are the smart choice for financial mortals, blah, blah.I know that. Im saying if you were take say... 2500 just to experiment, how expensive is it to buy stocks? I know little about this. Say for example, etrade. Is it prohibitively expensive to put a little money in some staple companies coca-cola, altria, google, apple, exxon, berkshire B, etc just for fun?  <response>: If I were going to take a small amount of money and play into individual stocks for fun, I dont know that I would put it into staple companies. Its fun money, aim for returns that are better than what you could get by just putting it into indexed funds. Find a sector you know something about, and use that knowledge to try to pick a winner! unsolicitedadvice 