> If you have say 500 stocks and pay like $10 in broker fees per stock, in the end you'll pay $5000. That's not the end of the world for a long term investment.

> If you have say 500 stocks and pay like $10 in broker fees per stock, in the end you'll pay $5000. That's not the end of the world for a long term investment. If you only buy each stock one time. Which is absurd if you want a balanced portfolio you would need to buy a little bit of all 500 stocks a lot of times. A ETF lets you do this cheaply.