Executive Summary
On July 2, 1998, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC or Commission) amended SEC Rule 17a-5 to require broker/dealers to complete reports regarding their readiness and activities to prepare their businesses to address Year 2000 challenges and risks. The Rule amendment was published in the Federal Register—63 FR 37667 on July 13, 1998. Complete Rule information is also
Thank you, Kayte [Toczylowski, FINRA’s head of Member Relations and Education], and good morning, everyone. It is so wonderful to see you. I am delighted to join Kayte in welcoming you to the 2023 FINRA Annual Conference.
By Greg Ruppert, Executive Vice President, Member Supervision, FINRA
As a self-regulatory organization, FINRA is uniquely positioned to engage with member firms to understand their business models and provide them with timely, actionable insights and information. As part of FINRA Forward, FINRA is working to enhance how we support member firm compliance to better protect investors and safeguard markets, including strengthening the constructive feedback loop from FINRA’s regulatory programs to our member firms. Sharing information gathered through our regulatory programs can help member firms improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their compliance capabilities, understand how their compliance programs compare to other firms, and potentially avoid issues that might otherwise develop into compliance failures.
Any restrictions on the investment opportunities of retail investors are fundamentally misguided. Though an increase in due diligence might be helpful in guaranteeing brokers do not offer inappropriate investment advice to their under-informed clients (which is already disallowed), anyone who is willing to read the prospectuses and understand the products they are investing in should be
Individual investors should be permitted to trade leveraged and Reverse ETF. One does not need to have a large amount of capital to have intelligence and the ability to understand and use these investment vehicles. Special tests or other special requirements should not exist which would limit individual investors access to these vehicles. and, under no circumstances should access be cut at the
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (“FINRA”) is filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC” or “Commission”) a proposed rule change to amend Rule 13606 of the Code of Arbitration Procedure for Industry Disputes (“Industry Code”) to provide that the Director (“Director”) of FINRA Dispute Resolution Services (“DRS”) will provide a copy of the official record of an expungement hearing held pursuant to Rule 13805, and any transcription if the recording is transcribed, to any customers, upon request, who attend and participate in the expungement hearing, or who provide their position on the expungement request in writing.
Comments: Dear FINRA, I have been investing in stocks and options for over 30 years and have used leveraged or inverse products for the last 20 years. The proposed regulations and or guardrails for what you call complex products would undoubtedly disrupt the existence of these products and future development of these products. L&I ETF's have given me the opportunity to
As a retail investor, who has been actively trading in the last 2 years and these regulations are very much targeted at, I do not agree with the proposed rule/guidance changes. FINRA has already placed many barriers to retail investors in the form of PDT rules, $25k capital requirements, etc. At no point in my journey as a new trader have I felt that the restrictions benefitted me or protected me
I know for sure that having specialized rules and red tape for complex leveraged and inverse products does not actually reduce the risk faced by retail investors. Access to leverage can even be used to reduce risk in an overall portfolio, as numerous other commenters have noticed. When implemented as part of a well planned strategy, leveraged and inverse products can provide crucial diversifying
Dear Finra,
Leveraged funds are an important part of my investment strategy. Please do not make them difficult to access.
Yes, I understand and think most understand that the daily reset on leveraged funds means that an investor won't automatically earn the multiple of the index.
That said, they are tax efficient relative to futures for those of us who must invest in taxable brokerage
