Mar. 20, 2020
To Whom It May Concern I have been an investor and owner of leveraged securities for about 12 years. These leveraged funds have been very important to me as part of my portfolio. They allowed me to seek enhanced returns. Since I am working in financial industry, I can fully comprehend how leveraged funds work. I believe it is not necessary for the third party to evaluate my capability of dealing with leveraged funds, thus preventing me from buying them. I want to keep the access to these funds. It is important to preserve the long-standing free public markets where investors and their advisors have the freedom to buy public securities without government-imposed regulations. In general, I do believe that these proposed regulations are bad for investors. If this rule is adopted, some investors who could benefit from the enhanced returns could be prevented from having such opportunity. In addition, the brokerage firms would stop offering them since they don´t want to go through a complicated qualification process and regulations implementation. SEC has not shown there is a problem that needs to be solved with respect to leveraged funds. SEC failed to show why these funds should be treated differently than the other funds, each with their own characteristics and risks. Lastly, requiring to qualify to purchase would be a dangerous precedent. The proposal would be at odds with how SEC has worked over about 90 years - giving the investors the right to make their own investment decisions. Hopefully the proposed regulation won´t go through. Sincerely, Ondrej Fukala