What is the equivalent of the QQQ in the UK for the FTSE 100?
I'm not familiar with QQQ, but I'm guessing this is something like IShares Ftse 100 (see description here) I searched for FTSE 100 fund on Yahoo Finance and found POW FTSE RAF UK 100 (PSRU.L), among many others.  Google Finance is another possible source that immediately comes to mind.
Short the Pound and other English financial items.  Because the English economy is tied to the EU, it will be hit as well.  You might prefer this over Euro denominated investments, since it's not exactly clear who your counterpart is if the Euro really crashes hard.  Meaning suppose you have a short position Euro's versus dollars, but the clearing house is taken down by the crash. I've never heard of such a thing, but seems like if such a product existed it would be easily manipulated by the big trading firms - simply bet that trading volume will go up, then furiously buy and sell shares yourself to artificially drive up the volume. The fact that it would be so easily manipulated makes me think that no such product exists, but I could be wrong. "I agree that you should CONSIDER a shares based dividend income SIPP, however unless you've done self executed trading before, enough to understand and be comfortable with it and know what you're getting into, I would strongly suggest that as you are now near retirement, you have to appreciate that as well as the usual risks associated with markets and their constituent stocks and shares going down as well as up, there is an additional risk that you will achieve sub optimal performance because you are new to the game. I took up self executed trading in 2008 (oh yes, what a great time to learn) and whilst I might have chosen a better time to get into it, and despite being quite successful over all, I have to say it's the hardest thing I've ever done! The biggest reason it'll be hard is emotionally, because this pension pot is all the money you've got to live off until you die right? So, even though you may choose safe quality stocks, when the world economy goes wrong it goes wrong, and your pension pot will still plummet, somewhat at least. Unless you ""beat the market"", something you should not expect to do if you haven't done it before, taking the rather abysmal FTSE100 as a benchmark (all quality stocks, right? LOL) from last Aprils highs to this months lows, and projecting that performance forwards to the end of March, assuming you get reasonable dividends and draw out £1000 per month, your pot could be worth £164K after one year. Where as with normal / stable / long term market performance (i.e. no horrible devaluation of the market) it could be worth £198K! Going forwards from those 2 hypothetical positions, assuming total market stability for the rest of your life and the same reasonable dividend payouts, this one year of devaluation at the start of your pensions life is enough to reduce the time your pension pot can afford to pay out £1000 per month from 36 years to 24 years. Even if every year after that devaluation is an extra 1% higher return it could still only improve to 30 years. Normally of course, any stocks and shares investment is a long term investment and long term the income should be good, but pensions usually diversify into less and less risky investments as they get close to maturity, holding a certain amount of cash and bonds as well, so in my view a SIPP with stocks and shares should be AT MOST just a part of your strategy, and if you can't watch your pension pot payout term shrink from 26 years to 24 years hold your nerve, then maybe a SIPP with stocks and shares should be a smaller part! When you're dependent on your SIPP for income a market crash could cause you to make bad decisions and lose even more income. All that said now, even with all the new taxes and loss of tax deductible costs, etc, I think your property idea might not be a bad one. It's just diversification at the end of the day, and that's rarely a bad thing. I really DON'T think you should consider it to be a magic bullet though, it's not impossible to get a 10% yield from a property, but usually you won't. I assume you've never done buy to let before, so I would encourage you to set up a spread sheet and model it carefully. If you are realistic then you should find that you have to find really REALLY exceptional properties to get that sort of return, and you won't find them all the time. When you do your spread sheet, make sure you take into account all the one off buying costs, build a ledger effectively, so that you can plot all your costs, income and on going balance, and then see what payouts your model can afford over a reasonable number of years (say 10). Take the sum of those payouts and compare them against the sum you put in to find the whole thing. You must include budget for periodic minor and less frequent larger renovations (your tenants WON'T respect your property like you would, I promise you), land lord insurance (don't omit it unless you maintain capability to access a decent reserve (at least 10-20K say, I mean it, it's happened to me, it cost me 10K once to fix up a place after the damage and negligence of a tenant, and it definitely could have been worse) but I don't really recommend you insuring yourself like this, and taking on the inherent risk), budget for plumber and electrician call out, or for appropriate schemes which include boiler maintenance, etc (basically more insurance). Also consider estate agent fees, which will be either finders fees and/or 10% management fees if you don't manage them yourself. If you manage it yourself, fine, but consider the possibility that at some point someone might have to do that for you... either temporarily or permanently. Budget for a couple of months of vacancy every couple of years is probably prudent. Don't forget you have to pay utilities and council tax when its vacant. For leaseholds don't forget ground rent. You can get a better return on investment by taking out a mortgage (because you make money out of the underlying ROI and the mortgage APR) (this is usually the only way you can approach 10% yield) but don't forget to include the cost of mortgage fees, valuation fees, legal fees, etc, every 2 years (or however long)... and repeat your model to make sure it is viable when interest rates go up a few percent." "FTSE ethical investment index: http://www.ftse.com/products/indices/FTSE4Good ""The FTSE4Good Index is a series of ethical investment stock market   indices launched in 2001 by the FTSE Group.  A number of stock market   indices are available, for example covering UK shares, US shares,   European markets, and Japan, with inclusion based on a range of   corporate social responsibility criteria. Research for the indices is   supported by the Ethical Investment Research Services (EIRIS)."" -   Wikipedia" http://www.moneysupermarket.com/shares/CompareSharesForm.asp lists many. I found the Interactive Investor website to be excruciatingly bad. I switched to TD Waterhouse and found the website good but the telephone service a bit abrupt. I often use the data presented on SelfTrade but don't have an account there. FYI, I am assuming you are an individual investor.. The rates on the website may change, if the government decides so. Anyway it is a UK government website, so it would reflect the changes immediately. "TL;DR - go with something like Barry Ritholtz's All Century Portfolio: 20 percent total U.S stock market 5 percent U.S. REITs 5 percent U.S. small cap value 15 percent Pacific equities 15 percent European equities 10 percent U.S. TIPs 10 percent U.S. high yield corp bonds 20 percent U.S. total bond UK property market are absurdly high and will be crashing a lot very soon The price to rent ratio is certainly very high in the UK.    According to this article, it takes 48 years of rent to pay for the same apartment in London.  That sounds like a terrible deal to me.  I have no idea about where prices will go in the future, but I wouldn't voluntarily buy in that market. I'm hesitant to invest in stocks for the fear of losing everything A stock index fund is a collection of stocks.  For example the S&P 500 index fund is a collection of the largest 500 US public companies (Apple, Google, Shell, Ford, etc.).  If you buy the S&P 500 index, the 500 largest US companies would have to go bankrupt for you to ""lose everything"" - there would have to be a zombie apocalypse. He's trying to get me to invest in Gold and Silver (but mostly silver), but I neither know anything about gold or silver, nor know anyone who takes this approach. This is what Jeremy Siegel said about gold in late 2013: ""I’m not enthusiastic about gold because I think gold is priced for either hyperinflation or the end of the world.""  Barry Ritholtz also speaks much wisdom about gold.  In short, don't buy it and stop listening to your friend.   Is buying a property now with the intention of selling it in a couple of years for profit (and repeat until I have substantial amount to invest in something big) a bad idea? If the home price does not appreciate, will this approach save you or lose you money?  In other words, would it be profitable to substitute your rent payment for a mortgage payment?  If not, you will be speculating, not investing.  Here's an articles that discusses the difference between speculating and investing.  I don't recommend speculating." You might have better luck using Quandl as a source.  They have free databases, you just need to register to access them.  They also have good api's, easier to use than the yahoo api's Their WIKI database of stock prices is curated and things like this are fixed (www.quandl.com/WIKI ), but I'm not sure that covers the London stock exchange.  They do, however, have other databases that cover the London stock exchange. Some of the ETFs you have specified have been delisted and are no longer trading.  If you want to invest in those specific ETFs, you need to find a broker that will let you buy European equities such as those ETFs.  Since you mentioned Merrill Edge, a discount broking platform, you could also consider Interactive Brokers since they do offer trading on the London Stock Exchange.  There are plenty more though.  Beware that you are now introducing a foreign exchange risk into your investment too and that taxation of capital returns/dividends may be quite different from a standard US-listed ETF. In the US, there are no Islamic or Shariah focussed ETFs or ETNs listed.  There was an ETF (JVS) that traded from 2009-2010 but this had such little volume and interest, the fees probably didn't cover the listing expenses.  It's just not a popular theme for North American listings. "The London Stock Exchange offers a wealth of exchange traded products whose variety matches those offered in the US.  Here is a link to a list of exchange traded products listed on the LSE.  The link will take you to the list of Vanguard offerings.  To view those offered by other managers, click on the letter choices at the top of the page.  For example, to view the  iShares offerings, click on ""I"". In the case of Vanguard, the LSE listed S&P500 ETF is traded under the code VUSA.  Similarly, the Vanguard All World ETF trades under the code VWRL.  You will need to be patient viewing iShares offerings since there are over ten pages of them, and their description is given by the abbreviation ""ISH name"". Almost all of these funds are traded in GBP. Some offer both currency hedged and currency unhedged versions.  Obviously, with the unhedged version you are taking on additional currency risk, so if you wish to avoid currency risk then choose a currency hedged version.  Vanguard does not appear to offer currency hedged products in London while iShares does.  Here is a list of iShares currency hedged products.  As you can see, the S&P500 currency hedged trades under the code IGUS while the unhedged version trades under the code IUSA. The effects of BREXIT on UK markets and currency are a matter of opinion and difficult to quantify currently.  The doom and gloom warnings of some do not appear to have materialised, however the potential for near-term volatility remains so longs as the exit agreement is not formalised.  In the long-term, I personally believe that BREXIT will, on balance, be a positive for the UK, but that is just my opinion." "Although this is an old question, it's worth pointing out that the Google Stock Screener now supports stocks traded on the London Stock Exchange. From the country dropdown on the left, select ""United Kingdom"" and use the screener as before." "Wrong. Business lending has boomed under QE.. does the term ""cov-lite"" sound familiar? That's because there's so much liquidity, that they're willing to lend to companies with little to no restrictions. There is so much credit to go around, that a ""High Yield Bond"" can price at L+800 bps.   When you're taking all the risk of a HY issuer, and maxing your return at 8.5%-9%, it's not too appealing. Instead, you could take a bit more risk, but also get all of the potential upside of equities.   1.  Fed buys assets, injects money into banks.   2.  Banks, flush with liquidity, need to put their balance sheet to use and begin lending to everyone.   2.  Bond market flooded with supply, causes bond yields to drop to historic lows.     3.  Investors don't enjoy limiting upside for incredibly low returns, and begin flooding equity markets to get some sort of yield.    Business lending is booming, making equities the only place to get larger returns." Wikipedia is your friend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stock_exchanges There are multiple places where you can see this.  Company house website On any financial news website, if you have access e.g. TESCO on FT On any 3rd party website which supply information on companies e.g. TESCO on Companycheck An observation though, FT lists down more shareholders for me than Companycheck as I pay for FT. "I kind of understand the ""basics"", and have done a couple (with the assistance of pre-made excel sheets haha), I just don't feel that I'm creating an actual valuable valuation when I do one. While on the topic though, do you know where an individual investor can calculate the cost of debt for the WACC? I've been looking on morningstar and search up that public company and take the average of the coupon on all outstanding bonds. I don't feel like that's very correct though :("