This proposed regulation is backwards. Restricting the individual on their financial choices through regulation will only hurt individual investors and benefit wealth or institutional investors. These regulations stink of the wealthy and large institutional investors attempting to protect the market from retail investors. They thought for a long time that they held a monopoly on investment power and could make the markets go their way at their will. The retail investor shook them to the core and showed how little power they really have.

It should be up to individual investors to decide for themselves whether a particular product is appropriate for them to invest in. Having the inability to invest in complex funds or ETFs would limit me to actually beat the market . . . which it is why I use them as part of my investment strategy. Having to go through a special process in order to invest in such funds is like taking a test in order to drive a car. No one that I see on the road obeys the speed limit OR even Stops at a stop sign completely.

As a 91 yr-old with over 70 years of experience in the Securities Markets__15 of those years as a Registered Broker__I have witnessed countless examples of inept actions by Big Govt. "Hedge Fund" connotes dodgy transac- tions in the view of most. And yet the basic strategy's been used with commodities, insurance and debt securities for 100's of years to REDUCE "risk". Competent "risk analysis" is very rare__especially in Big Govt.

I am currently planning my retirement. I use inverse and leverage funds to help build for my retirement. These funds are bought and sold just like stocks and gives people the flexibility to choose how, when, how much etc. to invest based on personal decisions and risk assessment by the individual. Restricting access would be similar to limiting competition and choice. By restricting access, you could be pushing towards an antitrust violation / lawsuit type of situation.

Regulation, in almost every instance of its implementation has never been what it has been sold as. It is almost never to protect investors and almost always serve the self interest of those regulating it like a Trading platform removing a buy button from specific stocks.

There are thousands of sources of information for investors to research and understand these complex inverse ETFS. The only thing complex about them is handled by the company that issues them and not the investor.

As is often the case in government policy, the motivations of this seem good. However, limiting investments until someone has a liquid net worth of 1M or other limit has proven suboptimal. These specialized products are risk management tools - perhaps used to hedge a portfolio without selling and realizing gains, or taking advantage of markets that would otherwise be unavailable without a large futures account.

Dear FINRA,

I have become aware of the unnecessary regulations planned for restricting my access to invest in leveraged and inverse funds. I have been trading inverse and leveraged ETFs for the last four years without any issues. Adding restrictions will stop me from trading and investing in ETFs as well as many other investors that can profit from changes in the market trends.

Dear FINRA regulators,
We believe it is an investors right to freely access the entirety of the public securities markets without any arbitrary restrictions. Any restrictions could potentially deny us the freedom to choose investments that could help us achieve long-term financial security.

Leveraged and inverse ETFs are an important option for individual investors. They are NOT difficult to understand. Individual investors should have access to be able to both attempt to enhance returns and to hedge investments.
Equity investments in general are risk assets and do not have guarantees.