People are already pissing away their 401k thinking they can strike it rich and beat the market because they successfully backtested against some tick data on 50 symbols, paid some offshorer a few hundred dollars to implement their trading algorithm against IB or in NinjaTrader on a high margin and no limit orders. Trust me, people have been trying to &#x27;beat the market&#x27; competing against the Renaissances and PIMCOs for ages.<p>E-trade arguably does just as much damage, letting an average end user (who often lacks the industry experience of both the financial industry as well as the company in which they choose to invest) throw their money into anything. A VC once said he knew the Web 1.0 boom was over when his cabbie told him to invest in Cisco.<p>I, for one, think that the Bloomberg reign -of-terror can&#x27;t end soon enough. They&#x27;re as bad as Elsevier in monopolizing information. Information can be used properly or improperly in any context[1]. You want to see some real damage? Give that demographic access to Q&#x2F;KDB+ and let them underwrite a 20x inter-day margin with their mortgages.<p>[1]Go to any o-chem forum and you&#x27;ll see tons of graduate students talking about research chemical drug synthesis techniques, precursor availability, ways around DEA watched-chemical lists, etc. It&#x27;s vaguely masked in their own lexicon, but it&#x27;s plain as day.<p>Edit: By throwing away ones 401k, I meant &quot;cashing out their 401k and effectively gambling on a handful of stocks&quot;. Low-load &#x2F; no-load 401k&#x27;s and (Roth) IRAs are way safer prospective investments often with useful tax benefits. I keep my 401k with Vanguard and they explicitly say &quot;Very few Vanguard funds charge fees when you buy and sell shares. The fees are designed to help those funds cover higher transaction costs and protect long-term investors by discouraging short-term, speculative trading.&quot; which is a mentality that most people should adopt. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;investor.vanguard.com&#x2F;mutual-funds&#x2F;fees" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;investor.vanguard.com&#x2F;mutual-funds&#x2F;fees</a>