Hey everyone, thanks very much for the replies.
Ideally, from what I can see the only options open to me are to go with a low/no risk bond/banking scheme. Obviously, while this does appeal on a certain level I have always had an interest in Share trading and would prefer to do that over leaving my money in a bank for 5 years at 4% interest.
With that in mind, my $10k investment is not going into penny stocks, as appealing as the potential return is I have seen a few of my friends and co workers look into these stocks and invest big thinking they are going to retire at the age of 25, only to lose most of the money they saved over the past 4-5 years.
Ideally I'd like a simple portfolio of 3 major blue chip stocks, each with ~$2k each invested in them, another 3 mid-range shares with ~$1k each invested and 3-4 "penny" stocks with a total of $1k between them.
This is just my initial thoughts, is there anything that immediately stands out as wrong about this? I do know that with a higher number of stocks the brokerage is going to add up, but I probably wont be trading more that once a year so this should keep the cost down. Thoughts?