Yes this forum will lean heavily on indexing. It's not wrong; it performs to the market standard, which is a tall order. A few of us practice other ideals as well. I specifically work on contrarian investing on a regular basis. I also index. I must say that I've spent more time reading and learning a bunch of different ideas and approaches (Buffet/Graham, Boggle, etc) before I ever moved cent the way I did. Certainly I still read, a lot, I tweak, I learn. Repeat. I didn't put a cent in until I was sure of my plan, how to react when things moved up, down, severely.
If motif investing speaks to you so, don't let us stop you. Certainly find good council, read and discuss your pros and cons, as there's always some. From what I can see, the fees of buying 30 stocks must be huge compared to a mutual fund for such a small amount. If you're even paying a 5$ commission on each, that would be incredible loss.
The issue here that isn't being addressed is that you have little or no income and money to move. You have no assurances! So, this is your only stop-loss before debt. If things went sour the next while, you may need to lean on such money. No pension, no disability and no back up savings to cover you (for now) so this must act as that savior. It can still work for you, for sure: there's great interest rates on chequing/saving accounts, you just have to find them (In Canada Tangerine, PC Financial, etc.). Second, putting the money to work for you, invested, but being accessible without penalty, would be great (Canadian TFSA, American IRA, I believe). When the music stops you have access again.
The cost of not having that money available, as an insurance policy could be high. I guess the worst case scenario would be 20% on credit card debt, or less on a line of credit, etc. But that's certainly the angle I'm looking at from here, less what you can make.