<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>cortesoft</author><text>I think Matt Levine has a good explanation about accredited investing and what private markets really mean:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; But in fact the main thing that distinguishes public and private markets is not their legal status—private markets are mostly open to accredited investors, while public markets are open to everyone—but the fact that private companies get to choose their investors, and public companies don’t. Hedge funds, for instance, are mostly open only to accredited investors, but not all hedge funds are open to all accredited investors. The very best hedge funds mostly aren’t open to anyone: They are at capacity, won’t take new money, and mostly manage money for their own very rich employees. Other hedge funds with long track records of good performance are open to big institutional allocators who can write very large checks. If you are a dentist making $205,000 a year, and you want to invest in hedge funds … someone will definitely sell you a hedge fund! It will not be Renaissance.&lt;p&gt;Just because we legally allow people to invest in whatever they want doesn&amp;#x27;t mean it will make equal footing between investors. The investments that will accept the people who are currently &amp;#x27;non-accreddited investors&amp;#x27; are going to be the worst of the private investments; it will do nothing to help the little guy compete with the rich guys.</text><parent_chain><item><author>travisoneill1</author><text>The whole thing should be scrapped.  This is supposed to be protecting unsophisticated investors, but most of the investments prevented here are equity investments in small businesses.  While at the same time anybody is allowed to buy TVIX, a 2x leveraged VIX ETF, which is basically gambling.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>SEC proposes changes to “accredited investor” definition</title><url>https://www.dlapiper.com/en/us/insights/publications/2020/01/sec-proposes-changes-to-accredited-investor-definition/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>Mvandenbergh</author><text>Agreed. While I think it is sensible to have rules that prevent gullible members of the public from being bamboozled, I also think that a more sensible policy is what the UK has. Here you can self-certify as a &amp;quot;sophisticated investor&amp;quot; which is basically the same thing except that there is no obligation on anyone to check your self-certification i.e. there is no penalty to claiming to be one when you&amp;#x27;re not nor is there any penalty for allowing someone to invest who self-certifies but doesn&amp;#x27;t actually meet the criteria. That seems fair. If you&amp;#x27;re willing to confirm that then you should be able to invest in whatever damn fool thing you want.&lt;p&gt;(Note that in the UK private individuals can trade things like contracts for difference and spread bets which I actually think is slightly mad)</text><parent_chain><item><author>travisoneill1</author><text>The whole thing should be scrapped.  This is supposed to be protecting unsophisticated investors, but most of the investments prevented here are equity investments in small businesses.  While at the same time anybody is allowed to buy TVIX, a 2x leveraged VIX ETF, which is basically gambling.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>SEC proposes changes to “accredited investor” definition</title><url>https://www.dlapiper.com/en/us/insights/publications/2020/01/sec-proposes-changes-to-accredited-investor-definition/</url></story>