I'm a former registered investment advisor and was on the board of the National Futures Association as a CTA representative on the self regulatory body for the futures industry. I also served as an arbitrator on cases where clients were suing their futures brokers. In my experience over 45 years of trading, investors in the US have been handicapped in providing themselves strategies and products that can be used to mitigate risk or use to capture a return stream of their choosing. I have seen a steady flow of regulations over the years that give investors a false sense of security. They turn off their brains, trust their financial planner and get sold one more plain vanilla investment vehicle "approved" of by the US regulators and the mutual fund industry. This has and continues to provide substandard returns with more risk than is necessary. I use leveraged and sometime inverse funds to mitigate risk in some of our family's portfolio and hope to continue to do so. I encourage you to not add additional burdens to these instruments that will either do them harm or make them go away. I would be losing an important tool to manage our assets.
Thomas Basso Comment On Regulatory Notice 22-08
I'm a former registered investment advisor and was on the board of the National Futures Association as a CTA representative on the self regulatory body for the futures industry. I also served as an arbitrator on cases where clients were suing their futures brokers. In my experience over 45 years of trading, investors in the US have been handicapped in providing themselves strategies and products that can be used to mitigate risk or use to capture a return stream of their choosing. I have seen a steady flow of regulations over the years that give investors a false sense of security. They turn off their brains, trust their financial planner and get sold one more plain vanilla investment vehicle "approved" of by the US regulators and the mutual fund industry. This has and continues to provide substandard returns with more risk than is necessary. I use leveraged and sometime inverse funds to mitigate risk in some of our family's portfolio and hope to continue to do so. I encourage you to not add additional burdens to these instruments that will either do them harm or make them go away. I would be losing an important tool to manage our assets.