A Newfound Knowledge

I'm in a new class, and I am finding out something about investing that surprises me very much.  The class is called Investment Principals, and it mainly deals with real estate investing, but it also is an introduction to investing in general.  What surprised me was how little people know about investing.  I guess that's why the college offers this course.
In the class, we were discussing what would be a good way for a novice investor to get into stock trading.  I started thinking about all the ways I could think of that would work for someone who hadn't ever done any investing, let alone trading in the stock market.  Hmmm...mutual funds?  That's pretty safe, would keep a novice from investing in something that might have devastating consequences.  Not a lot of return, though. You are pretty much relying on the mutual fund to go up, and, as we know, what goes up generally comes back down again.  When do you sell if it goes up?  And most mutual funds have at least some management fees.
Well, I kept coming back to using this AIM for Dogs method.  It's fairly simple, and really, would work even if someone only checked it every quarter.  I've also been thinking lately that someone with a very small account could start with 3 or 4 stocks instead of 5.  That would make the increments smaller when it cam time to sell or buy.  The other rules would stay the same, though.  No more than one transaction a month, nothing less than $100.  There's no difficult decisions about what stocks to buy - it's all there in the Dogs for the Dow.  Now, my sons only had like $1000 to invest, so, since even the small Dogs were prices a bit out of their budget, I found some low-priced, dividend-paying stocks.  They've worked pretty well so far.  They aren't as volatile as I'd hoped, but I'm sure they work out.  I wouldn't recommend doing that if I was a novice, though.  Just stick with those small Dogs, even if you have to just do 3 stocks.  You can always add another one if your cash level gets real high.  I would say it would need to be high enough that you can buy enough of the extra stock to about match the value of the other stocks, plus still have enough cash to have it at 50% of the total portfolio value. Ideally, though, to use individual stocks, an investor should have at least $2000 - $1000 for stock, and $1000 to start with in cash.  That way no matter which way the market goes, they'd be prepared.  If they only have like $1000 to invest, they should just get a mutual fund.  Find a volatile one, though.
I'll have to talk to the class about this...