I am new to the UK and would like to find out how I can find interesting private investment products?

Depends what you mean by 'private investment products'. If you mean private equity for the retail investor then you will be looking at Pre-ipo stuff.... in this market, not much of value around. I would be looking for managed trading accounts if you are looking for high yields... lots and lots of risks attached but DYOR and you can see what is out thier.

If you have the stomach, trading the Dow, for example, is giving huge returns, but the risk is massive. I trade the Dow all day, but just today there has been, probably 600 points to trade. Basically, all day it has moved between 8450 and 8600, if you did 2 CFD contracts (approximately £1.20 per point) you would have made about £700 on £150 as margin. Problem is, if you got it wrong, that would be your loss!!!!

Massive opportunities, but massive, massive risk and I would definately not recommend an inexperienced trader to do it...

Having said that... Brian, do you think we have bottomed...? If so establishing 1 CFD contract now and on dips to 8000 could produce great results....

Fancy a Christmas survey for users on where the Dow will be, Brian?

I will go first..... errr..... 9200+

If we are seeing who can get closest, for a laugh, 9341 is my call....!!!!! (the worst thing is, I actually have a lot of money riding on it!!!!!!!... Budgie or Turkey for Christmas...we shall see....)

Personally I think we probably have seen the bottom - but am being cautious.

There seems to have been a lot of investor fear about the state of the world economy, but there's a massive amount of government reinvestment going on worldwide which could counter-act the worst of this.

Got to admit, not sure if I'm ready to jump in as I already have a small portfolio running at about 30% loss, and am wary about the danger of throwing good money after bad.

Even still, for long term investing, now is such a ripe time I think.

I think you are right to be cautious, its a traders market. Doing OK on my postions since posting, we are up at 8900 as of writing, have take profits on some contracts, but worried about some crappy data this week, but there is this auto bail-out news supposed to be coming today. I can't help thinking that there will either be a big move on the upside or downside after this news... so cauitious to take some profits and trade it..

It maybe what is needed to move us into the 9000+ Santa rally situation...

I just posted something on another thread that I think a major downward pressure on stock prices at the moment is hedge funds being wound up to return cash to investors. I've seen it predicted that half of all hedge funds could be gone within a year, and it's one I'm taking seriously.

Previously, I'd be tempted to look to play damaged stocks in the US financials market because of the heavy profits that can be made - I mean, at present Ambac is at around $1.50, and last time the bulls ran, it went up past $8.

However, that comes with a lot of risk and instability, so I'm probably look to more stable companies, especially those in the US financials that have acquired other major companies - Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, etc. Or, at least, balance my portfolio more towards these, because holding for the long term (ie, over 10-20 years could be very enriching).

However, I'm also looking at no fast recovery, and instead very muted economy growth out of the recession for years.

The Great Depression and Japan both serve as the nearest models for the current situation, which means looking at the long term picture for investing strategies, and I daren't risk day trading in current conditions, so would probably be forced to look long-term, and look at the stronger US banks.

I tend not to look at other sectors, but I'm sure there are other opportunities.

The interesting question is what the next bubble will be - green tech already showed a lot of promise in this area before the credit crunch hit, so maybe somewhere to look more closely at I guess.

Oh, just to add - there's a lot of talk, but I think everything is underlined by the housing market - and Winter is never a good time for the property market, but Spring traditionally is. As the property sale reports tend to be a few months behind, that means looking for a bull market to start to really establish itself around June, through with quite a few ups and downs in between.

Retailers will probably take a beating, so economic news over Jan-March may be bleak - but have investors already factored this in?

Also, I think Google's hold on internet advertising puts it in an incredible position - internet advertising is the only platform companies can really measure returns from, and it remains a market with strong grwoth prospects over even the near term, as print and TV advertising continues down.

2c.