March 11, 2020
The Securities and Exchange Commission provides an invaluable service by preventing fraudulent promoters from preying on a naive public. This service should not be expanded to determining what risk levels the government will allow investors to assume. If leveraged ETF's are to be banned, what's next. Margin? If inverse ETF's are to be banned, what's next. Short selling? Financial markets by their nature entail risks. For the SEC to go beyond their historical function of policing frauds to regulating the legitimate risks investors can assume would be a dangerous opening of a financial Pandora's box that would make our markets far less efficient.
My portfolio was hedged with a leveraged inverse ETF that did an excellent job of protecting me from the first half of the market selloff of Feb 2020. I expect the losses I did take from prematurely removing this hedge to be more than made up with a leveraged long ETF.
Without the ability to use these excellent financial products, I would be subject to far more risk than necessary.