There was a company that recently started trying to sell stocks at retail outlets (walmart, etc) -- basically you could pay $20 for some sort of placeholder card (much like you might buy Netflix credits or whatever) that were good for shares in a company. This reminds me of that in a bad way.

This is right up with the amount of pushing that is done for FX trading in japan -- it's hugely risky and really just a way to extract money from retail investors dumb enough to go for it. The information asymmetry, relationships, and access that institutional investors have versus the average retail investor is so stark that this is basically a trap for smart (but naive) people.

Nevermind how scammy IPOs can be -- your trades don't go as fast as the big guys, and that matters. The "pop"s are made by waves of dumb money while the smart money was basically already in (whether that means private equity or trades that executed earlier than retail).

This is obviously not about America, but I think it's relevant (with what I know about Japan living here for a few years):

https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/investment_manager.ht...

Japan's economy is similarly stratified, it's just that less people care/actually have time to do anything about it.