September 25, 2021
1. Do you have one or more online trading or investment accounts?
Yes, I have one or more accounts that I access online, either using a computer or a mobile app but I also access the account(s) in other ways (e.g., by calling or visiting in person).
2. If your response to Question 1 is Yes, do you think you would trade or invest if you could not do so online using a computer or using a mobile app?
No
3. On average, how often do you access your online account?
Daily/more than once a day
4. On average, how often are trades made in your online account, whether by you or someone else?
Once to a few times per month.
5. If you access your account online, did you have the account first, and only began to access it electronically later? Or did you open the account with the idea that you would access it electronically immediately?
I downloaded an app or visited a website first, and then opened up an account with the company
6. My goals for trading or investing in my online account are (check all that apply):
Keep the amount of money I have, while keeping up with inflation
Save and grow my money for medium- to long-term goals
7. What would you like us to know about your experience with the features of your online trading or investment platform? (Examples of features are: social networking tools games, streaks, or contests with prizes points, badges, and leaderboards notifications celebrations for trading visual cues, like changing colors ideas presented at order placement or other curated lists or features subscription and membership tiers or chatbots.)
User interface is generally good, it's what happens behind the scenes that is the problem: Retail investors are little more than lambs being led to a slaughter thanks to Payment for order-flow and brokers lending shares for the explicit purpose of shorting. These two behaviors allow blatant market manipulation by the extremely wealthy, large hedge-funds, and market-makers.
8. If you were trading or investing prior to using an online account, how have your investing and trading behaviors changed since you started using your online account? (For example, the amount of money you have invested, your interest in learning about investing and saving for retirement, the amount of time you have spent trading, your knowledge of financial products, the number of trades you have made, the amount of money you have made in trading, your knowledge of the markets, the number of different types of financial products you have traded, or your use of margin.)
9. How much experience do you have trading or investing in the following products (None, 12 months, 1-2 years, 2-5 years, 5+ years):
Stocks : 1-2 Years
Bonds : Less Than 12 Months
Options : Less Than 12 Months
Mutual Funds : None
ETFs : 1-2 Years
Futures : None
Cryptocurrencies : Less Than 12 Months
Commodities : None
ClosedEnd Funds : None
Money Market Funds : 5+ Years
Variable Insurance Products : None
Business Development Companies : None
Unit Investment Trusts : None
10. What is your understanding, if any, of the circumstances under which trading or investing in your account can be suspended or restricted?
Trading can be restricted if a stock or market triggers a circuit breaker, my personal account can be suspended or restricted if I try to withdraw money before it has posted, or I can be suspended for participating in illegal behavior like insider trading. Unfortunately it seems that large hedge funds and members of the Federal Government gave themselves the power to commit insider trading without facing the same punishments that apply to everyone else.
11. What else would you like us to know positive or negative - about your experience with online trading and investing?
I feel ripped off by the SEC who fails to rigorously police the marketplace and far too often sees its employees leave to work for the very companies they were supposed to be regulating. Large institutions blatantly manipulate the market daily, members of Congress can commit insider trading, and rarely does anything happen to them. Payment for order-flow exists only to allow market-makers like Citadel to front-run retain trades using high-frequency trading and dark-pools. Neither should exist in an honest marketplace. Brokers should not be able to lend out shares to be shorted as this is a direct conflict of interest with the broker's customers who purchased those shares with the intention of seeing prices rise. There is no healthy reason for shorting of shares to exist. It encourages and rewards predatory, dishonest behavior to drive down the price of a stock for the benefit of the shorter at the expense of everyone else, particularly retail investors. Short Hedges like Melvin Capital, Citadel, or Scorpion Capital are gross abusers of shorting, targeting weak companies and either flooding the market with synthetic shares to demolish the asset value, or targeting emerging tech companies whose valuation is based on future predictions rather than current profit, taking a short position using borrowed shares, then issuing a disparaging report citing anonymous sources to bash the price of the company down before the company or other analysts have time to respond. By the time the company can respond, the price has plummeted, long investors have lost big and the short-attacker walks away with a huge payday, with no concern for the damage they have caused, nor ever being called to account for the dishonesty of their claims. \"BLI\" is an example of this attack method. Scorpion issued a report that was debunked within a day by other analysts and the company itself, but the stock had lost 50% of its value by that time. And since this is an emerging company still with negative earnings, this injection of fear means it takes far longer for their share-price to recover than for an establish company like Microsoft. Scorpion gets rewarded millions of dollars for lying.