Skip to main content

David Albright Comment On Regulatory Notice 22-08

David Albright
N/A

I have been trading levered products for over 10 years now and hope to be able to have the option of doing so unfettered by unnecessary restrictions/regulations in the future.
While I agree that there are investors/traders in the market that use these instruments that are not fully aware of what they really are, the same can absolutely be said about every other ETF type products available on the market today as well as individual stocks by the way to a lesser degree. And since many traders - retail and larger investors alike - trade on margin, the leverage effect is the same.
Rather than restricting the ability to choose what instruments and how often one can trade those instruments, more effort should be put towards educational offerings.
I am not opposed to having traders/investors having to attest to reading disclosures. But the idea of making these instruments available to only certain class of investor (net worth tests), cooling off periods, approval from brokers and excessive tests to use such instruments is an over reach.
Let's face it, if the goal is to limit investors ability to loose money by bad decisions, removing these products or extremely restricting these products is NOT going to stop that. They will always find another way to follow that path.
The place of Regulation in markets is to level the playing field by making sure that one party does not have an unfair advantage while allowing the free market to exist. Too much regulation/restriction unbalances free markets.