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How much percent of my salary should I use to invest in company stock?
There is Free employer money on both sides of the tax fence for some employees.   On the pretax side, your employer may provide you a match.  If so, invest the maximum to get 100% of the match.   On the after tax side, many companies offers a 15% discount on ESPP plans and a one year hold.  My wife has such an employer.  The one year hold is fine because it allows us to be taxed at Long Term Capital gains if the stock goes up which is lower than our current income bracket.  After creating a seasoned pool of stocks that we could sell after the one year hold, we are then able to sell the same number of stocks purchased each month.  This provides a 17.6% guaranteed gain on a monthly basis.  How much would you purchase if you had a guaranteed 17.6% return.  Our answer is 15% (our maximum allowed). The other trick is that while the employer is collecting the money, you will purchase the stock at the lowest day of the period.  You will usually sell for even more than the purchase price unless the day purchased was the lowest day of month.   The trick is to reinvest the money in tax free investments to balance out the pretax investing.  Never leave the money in the plan.  That is too much risk.