Not supporting Kalshi here, but why doesn't the reasoning apply to stock market? Maybe it does, but the law excludes stock markets?
If you either (a) treat it like gambling or (b) don't participate at all because you think it is gambling, then I am sorry for your sake.
You have lots of recourse if you lose money through your stock broker. Kalshi, on the other hand, is less regulated than a casino.
Of course there is. If the broker improperly evaluated your suitability to trade options, you'd be able to–at the very least–cost them tens of thousands of dollars in compliance costs. In all likelihood, a retail investor taking their broker to FINRA arbitration has even odds of prevailing.
And even in the extreme case that you did file a claim and you were awarded damages it would probably be only for a fraction of what you lost
What are you basing this on?
Sure. What are you looking at?
> common sense
There's your problem.
> real world experience with options trading
Did you ever take anything to arbitration?
For what it's worth, former options market maker here.
The number seems very small compared to the sheer number of retail investors that lose money on options and a lot of these don't even go in favor of the complaintant either.
Just to clarify I'm not talking about somebody doing some sort of complex options play that ends them up in debt when they are 17 years old or something like that.
I'm talking about the average case where somebody signs up for a brokerage account, funds the account, accepts the disclaimers and fills out the questionnaire to do options, is approved for level one, buys some call options, and they all go to zero. Why should they get their money back?
Most retail investors don't complain. And most brokerages settle before going to arbitration, because the win rates aren't great and either way it winds up on your record.
> I'm not talking about somebody doing some sort of complex options play
Those are actually more likely to go against the investor. Someone making an over-leveraged nonsense play is more sympathetic. (Or, investor was an idiot but broker failed to file a trade report on time or sent a stupid text or whatever.)
> Why should they get their money back?
Big question. Simpler: they do. A quarter to a third of cases between '21 and '26 resulted in customer awards, per your source.
Right, only a quarter, and that is just any award, it could be 10% of what they lost
Sure. It’s still (a) a huge pain in the ass for the broker and (b) more than anyone will get from Kalshi.