I appreciate the need to protect retail investors from making decisions when they do not fully understand the risks or other features of the products. It is reasonable to require the broker to take steps to educate retail investors and conduct some sort of test to make sure that they understand what they are getting into. But insurmountable obstacles should not be thrown in the path of retail investors who are willing to put in the effort to understand what they are doing.

I don't believe that it is correct to classify products as complex due to their structure. Leveraged ETFs have their complexities, but so do many companies. Any given biotech stock may expose investors to more risk, but would be easier to access and trade. It's my belief that any investor who fails to understand the product they're buying deserves any losses they may take and that classifying some products as more complex and therefore riskier, FINRA may accidentally imply that ordinary stocks are comparatively safe when this is clearly not the case.

Complex products (ex: leveraged ETFs) are already limited in several wise ways. Limiting the leverage available to 3x is a good policy. However, completely gatekeeping who can access these products would simply increase inequality and unnecessarily increase costs for consumers. Gatekeeping access to all these complex opportunities would be akin to providing the unearned rent seeking through regulation that tax preparers enjoy now. To reduce inequality and increase prosperity for consumers, we need less unnecessary certification requirements, not less.