I have been reading the other thread (bumper yield on wall street) and it makes for some good read, but it is also not really helping a lot of nepalese that have little or no experience/knowledge about the market. I am reading up on all these proclamations by the threaders (and maybe they are telling the truth), but I can easily see the ramifications -- ever seen those auto commercials where they say 'do not try this at home"? This is one of those things. Forget options, futures and currency swaps unless you know what you are doing. Heck, even stay away from individual securities if you can help it. for beginners, go after mutual funds. try cheap mutual fund houses such as Vanguard, Trowe and Fidelity. go to morningstar.com and look for the 4 and 5 stars; and then most important, create a well diversified mix--have proper controls in place so you dont have everything correlated to the market; go after index funds to minimize costs, and place your equity exposure in accordance to your age (for example, if you are 30 go after 30% in bonds and cash and the rest in stock exposure) by the same token within the stk exposure break it down 50/50 between domestic and international-- choose an index fund copied around the wilshire 5000, and an international index fund chasing the msci (international index)---with fixed income (bonds) have 1/3rds in mmkt, an bond index fund, and a high yield. there, that should do it. Dont forget to rebalance it every year though.