Think Alex Kearns, the 20 year old RobinHood trader who was trading options, and said in his suicide note that he didn't know what he was doing, was fully vetted?
Options are unbelievably complex. 99.9% of traders don't even know what Black Scholes is and can't read financials. They're exotic instruments used as a hedging strategy against black swan events as part of a much larger portfolio, and the hedging strategy is designed to lose continuously for a decade if needed.
It's become a casino that lets kids make cheap short term bets against a stock making big moves, for a price far lower than the underlying asset.
But the trouble with options is this: With stock you're betting on one thing: Stock goes up. That's it. With options you have to predict direction, timing, magnitude, and a wrong bet is guaranteed to lose 100% of your investment immediately on expiry. No riding it out.
We've had a huge bull market. When the market turns, and it always does, and the suicides start, and the stories of ruined families emerge, then the post-mortem will begin and we'll all heal together and, in time, we'll forget about the victims, as we always do. But their lives will remain in ruin. And the predatory cycle will repeat. As it always has.