British resident investing in US markets

Can someone here please tell me how can a British resident in UK invest in US markets - especially the IPO's.

I understand that many brokers (halifax etc) provide facility to buy shares in US secondary market. However keen to know how could i invest in IPO's listing on US stock exchanges?

i think in my basically newbie knowledge that only institutional investors like large investing corporations are able to buy in the primary market, when they sell the stock's it passes to the secondary market ( most popular NYSE) that's where investor's like you and me can buy the stock's through big usa online brokers just like ameritrade or scot trade

but that's just my humile opinion , i may be wrong you can be able to buy stock's at these ipo

by the way talking about this
i think biggest ipo in the year is facebook is friday 18 this month, i want to buy some shares... let's see what happens

Thanks for your reply.

Really? Is it not open to retail investors?

I know as an example in the Indian market certain proportion of shares are reserved for retail investors who can subscribe to the IPO.

Does anyone else know if a non - US retail investor can invest in US IPO?

oh no i doesn't have to do nothing if you aren't from USA... in fact im from colombia and im actually able to buy stocks from the usa market, however as i said and think , primary markets which have IPO'S as i remember to have read in some lesson only sell this stocks to very wealthy people, i mean if you have the money to afford investing in 1 million of stocks go for it but this is mostly for large investors like warren buffet or george soros


i think you should maybe do some research on the facebook IPO , maybe the have some good package for small investors, there is topic of this on this forum..

if you want to share experiences or talk about invesment strategies here you have a friend

my skype is magicdealsrd you can add me .. good luck..!

where theres a will theres a way .....call your Bank and ask for assistance...if they smell commission they will help

unfortunately Facebook will have a queue around the planet so be prepared to trade the price after the launch ....plenty of volatility will be on offer

N