Vanguard and Schwab already did that decades ago. They just didn't gamify their products or benefit from meme culture.
> I've been a retail consumer stock investor my entire adult life, and would be pretty unhappy if regulations locked me out of that.
"Retail consumers should not be [trading individual stocks]" is not a claim that individuals should be barred from putting their life savings into belly button lint futures if that's what want to do. It's simply stating that by and large, individuals should be encouraged towards sensible defaults and not simply whatever the latest meme investment is. Veering from those defaults for non-trivial sums of money should involve increasing levels of warning and resistance proportionate to the estimated change in risk.
And that goes in both directions. Just as retail consumers should be given additional levels of resistance for investing in individual stocks, investing in recently-memed stocks, buying put options, and buying on margin, they should also meet resistance when putting their entire balance into cash positions as happens to far too many investors that don't realize the error.
I know that. I didn't say the HN comments were correct! Heck, even in the 1920's there's that famous story of the elevator boy talking about the stocks he was trading.
Let adults be adults and invest the way they want to. The government shouldn't be treating them like children.
Yeah, well, I regularly read on HN about how retail consumers are locked out of investing in stocks, that only rich people can.
Robinhood blew that argument out of the water.
I've been a retail consumer stock investor my entire adult life, and would be pretty unhappy if regulations locked me out of that.