A license to sell leveraged ETFs, and specifically inverse ETF's, is a license to steal. Period. It should be a requirement that any designed financial instrument show in the prospectus how an investor may actually make money not just the risks of loosing it. Take TVIX, a long term chart shows in 2011 the price was 2,235,849,984, today its value is $112 dollars. A loosing investment start to finish, if you bought. They say it's a short term vehicle. But to be one there has to be some predictable relationship to something, anything, that could indicate an opportunity to buy. It is supposed to be a vehicle related to volatility, but it is not. It is supposed to be, as I've been told, related to futures options, but that hasn't proven out. It is so complicated that nobody, not even the experts can tell you how to make money in the end, unless they are telling you to sell the instrument, which is largely relegated to the institutions. Every purchase that has ever been made in this vehicle should be reversed and funds returned to the investor at the investment price. I closed out a position in TVIX in 2015 with catastrophic losses. The damage was so severe, personally, financially and psychologically, that I have not recovered, have not made a single trade since and may never again. Long after my position closed on TVIX, I was to learn in the FED minutes that the Fed had been shorting Volatility in order to calm the markets, thereby being on the other side of this trade from me. But the FED didn't say they were doing that at the time, or stop the sale of inverse volatility vehicles. So basically, my money was stolen. When you have such control over the market with either manipulation and or financial instruments, and full disclosure on the conditions aren't stated, that is simply stealing money. End these instruments, now, and all together. FINRA should have ended them a decade ago.
Jeff Haywood Comment On Regulatory Notice 22-08
A license to sell leveraged ETFs, and specifically inverse ETF's, is a license to steal. Period. It should be a requirement that any designed financial instrument show in the prospectus how an investor may actually make money not just the risks of loosing it. Take TVIX, a long term chart shows in 2011 the price was 2,235,849,984, today its value is $112 dollars. A loosing investment start to finish, if you bought. They say it's a short term vehicle. But to be one there has to be some predictable relationship to something, anything, that could indicate an opportunity to buy. It is supposed to be a vehicle related to volatility, but it is not. It is supposed to be, as I've been told, related to futures options, but that hasn't proven out. It is so complicated that nobody, not even the experts can tell you how to make money in the end, unless they are telling you to sell the instrument, which is largely relegated to the institutions. Every purchase that has ever been made in this vehicle should be reversed and funds returned to the investor at the investment price. I closed out a position in TVIX in 2015 with catastrophic losses. The damage was so severe, personally, financially and psychologically, that I have not recovered, have not made a single trade since and may never again. Long after my position closed on TVIX, I was to learn in the FED minutes that the Fed had been shorting Volatility in order to calm the markets, thereby being on the other side of this trade from me. But the FED didn't say they were doing that at the time, or stop the sale of inverse volatility vehicles. So basically, my money was stolen. When you have such control over the market with either manipulation and or financial instruments, and full disclosure on the conditions aren't stated, that is simply stealing money. End these instruments, now, and all together. FINRA should have ended them a decade ago.