As an educated & well-researched "retail" investor, I find this legislation incredibly insulting. The condescending essence of the idea that I am not capable of understanding the risks of leveraged and inverse ETFs is disgusting. Such ETFs have allowed me to outperform the major indexes through the bear market we are currently going through, and without access to them retail
Greetings,
It has come to my attention that FINRA is considering new restrictions on the ability of the public to invest in leveraged and inverse funds. I'm writing to express my opposition to restrictions which would significantly limit the public's access to and ability to use these important investment tools. In my own experience, leveraged and inverse funds are very useful
Executive Summary
The NASD announces revisions to the NASD Sanction Guidelines (Guidelines). The Guidelines were published for the first time in May 1993 so that members could become more familiar with the more typical securities industry violations that occur and the disciplinary sanctions that may result. The revisions to the Guidelines reflect recent developments in disciplinary sanctions
I have been using inverse/leveraged funds for over 7 years now. When I started I was new to trading. I did all the research on the funds as that was my responsibility as a trader. The brokers I use all explained in great detail the risks of trading these types of funds.
Everyone should have the right to trade these types of investments. It should not be based on how much wealth you have.
An individual should be able to make their own choices regarding what their risk tolerance is and what investment vehicles they choose. Leveraged/Inverse funds are only a small portion of my portfolio. I use this type of an investment as a hedge to protect the rest of my portfolio as well as enhance my overall returns. Over the last 50 years that I have had an active portfolio of investments,
My brokerage firm required me to listen to a statement detailing the potential risks for options before I could start trading them. Since options can similarly be used to achieve leverage or inverse returns, I think this is a reasonable requirement for trading in leveraged/inverse funds. At the end of the day, higher expected return comes hand in hand with greater risk. If a given investor isn
While I fully understand the need to have informed investors by placing common investment vehicles such as ESG funds , CEFs, ETF etc. on the list only serves to limit investments from the "common citizen".
In addition artifical barriers such as " broker approval" and tests seem to tilt the landscape toward forcing individuals to use "advisors"
Leveraged and inverse options should be maintained. They are like any investment product, and all licensed brokers or adviser make clients aware of the volatility decay associated with them. There are currently requirements for different levels of option investing, and a similar clearance could be required for those who invest in leveraged equities.
If you wish to remove risk from the market,
Leveraged and inverse funds are a hedging tool when I think put option premiums are expensive and/or I am unable to directly short a stock or ETF in my retirement accounts. I also use them to make speculative directional bets where I deem appropriate. Position size is always key in volatile products ,that is just common sense from the offset, or quickly learned by actual trading experience...
Please continue to let the small retail investors trying to build their retirement funds when the markets begin to fall, continue to trade inverse and multi-leveraged funds. IRA accounts are not allowed to short stocks and can't get margin for shorting so when markets go down so fast and stops are not always in place, we become "bag holders" in many good company stocks but because
