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Twenty years is young, but is there a particular age at which someone should be "allowed" to lose money playing with stocks / options? If the minimum age for opening an account if 18, should we put further restrictions on saying, for example, you can only sell puts when above 21? There are only so many restrictions we as a society can place before it starts severely infringing on personal freedom.

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If we agree that being able to own shares in companies is a worthwhile public good, that doesn't necessarily mean that options and other derivatives hold the same value to society.

Many options trades have an expected loss of nearly 100% - the same cant be said of holding stocks. Society has decided its OK to own houses, which certainly can decline in value, but outlaw ponzi schemes that for a substantial number of people are virtually guaranteed to wipe out their investment.

I don't think an age restriction is appropriate, other than 18/21/25, or some other reasonable definition of adult. But, I think it would be sensible to only allow options trades up to a certain percent of one's provable net worth - lets say 10% below $100k, 100% over $1M, or something like that.

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