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How about Matt Levine's "Certificate of Dumb Investment"? https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-09-24/earning-the-right-to-get-swindled https://www.b
by stickfigure 6y ago
How about Matt Levine's "Certificate of Dumb Investment"?
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-09-24/earning-the-right-to-get-swindled https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-09-24/earnin...
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1. Anyone can invest all they want in a diversified portfolio of approved investments (non-penny-stock public companies, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds with modest fees, insured bank accounts, etc.).
2. Anyone can also invest in any other dumb investment; you just have to go to the local office of the SEC and get a Certificate of Dumb Investment. (Anyone who sells dumb non-approved investments without requiring this certificate from buyers goes to prison.)
3. To get that certificate, you sign a form. The form is one page with a lot of white space. It says in very large letters: “I want to buy a dumb investment. I understand that the person selling it will almost certainly steal all my money, and that I would almost certainly be better off just buying index funds, but I want to do this dumb thing anyway. I agree that I will never, under any circumstances, complain to anyone when this investment inevitably goes wrong. I understand that violating this agreement is a felony.”
4. Then you take the form to an SEC employee, who slaps you hard across the face and says “really???” And if you reply “yes really” then she gives you the certificate.
5. Then you bring the certificate to the seller and you can buy whatever dumb thing he is selling.
6. If an article ever appears in the Wall Street Journal in which you (or your lawyer) are quoted saying that you were just a simple dentist, didn’t understand what you were buying and were swindled by the seller’s flashy sales pitch, then you go to prison.
- hinkley 6y agoThere’s an old Jerry Lewis bit where the clerk has no ink pad so she just slams the stamp into the back of your hand so hard that it cramps up into a claw. The claw is how the next clerk knows you’ve been through the other line. That could replace the slap part of the process.
- slavik81 6y agoThe Wikipedia page on accredited investors had the "big boy letter" in the related links, which I thought was funny. It appears to be a less bombastic version of the concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_boy_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_boy_letter
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoLOL, that would be interesting, but would never happen. Someone will argue the language has some ambiguity and the lawsuit will impact the SEC for 'failing to protect the public'