$100 is a low amount. Even with a low-fee provider of $2, that is 2 percent of your money going to fees. That is a serious drag on performance. The lowest cost you could probably do is with Interactive Brokers. That would probably cost you $1 at a time. ETFs have an advantage that you can sell them in the middle of the day. So you could put a stop order underneath. That way if the ETF price is getting destroyed, you can have the stop order try to sell your shares off before too much damage is done. This is a relatively uncommon event. The idea of ETFs is to diversify so the price swings are not as dramatic from day to day, and no one stock can do too much damage. You seem like a good candidate to open a Vanguard mutual fund. They practically built the company for people like you. They have lots of funds, and are a leader in the industry for low cost. Nothing wrong with mutual funds at all. They form the centerpiece of many people's sensible long-term investing strategies. Maybe Vanguard has a zero fee if you buy their ETF funds. Then you could buy ETFs or mutual funds. They offer both. Their philosophy is diversify at low cost. But they are largely agnostic regarding whether you want to use ETFs or mutual funds to achieve that goal.