It’s become something of an annual tradition for us to shake our heads at E-Trade’s Super Bowl ads. It’s not just that the heavily CGI’d baby looks creepy (although for the record, it does). The lack of disclaimers in these ads just rubs us the wrong way. We think we have good reason to be critical: those of us in the rest of the futures industry find ourselves strictly regulated in terms of what we can and can’t say to potential investors (such as not being allowed to talk about the potential for profit without an equal discussion of the fact you can lose money), and required to post detailed disclaimers on virtually everything we publish. Seeing NFA member E-Trade put up a commercial essentially saying trading is so easy a baby can do it, and that through them you will get piles of money just doesn’t seem right.

Here’s the cute baby misleading potential investors as to how easy trading on your own is:

Investing is not risk-free, and it’s not easy. These ads may be effective – at this point, they’re pretty iconic, and they’ve cemented the name E-Trade into the public consciousness. But for those of us who take risk disclosure seriously, these ads always serve as a reminder that the regulatory landscape is not even.  Why can NFA member E-Trade run these ads while rank-and-file members must label their ads with heavy disclaimers?

It’s about fairness – a concept so simple, that even a baby can understand it.