I'd like to speak today to our mainstream investors people who are
saving for long-term goals investing for
long-term goals or who have invested
over the long term and now are in their
retirement and need to look to those
investments to support their lifestyle
the SEC's role is basically to make sure
that the markets are working in a way
that provides a level of confidence to
the average investor what I've found
that the people the staff people that
work here that are doing the day-to-day
work at the Commission are here for the
right reasons the reason we do it is to
protect investors because every time we
stop a fraud there are some number of
people who aren't going to be victims
our markets are an important part of
facilitating the American Dream they
allow people who want to invest in their
businesses to raise capital they allow
people to invest for tomorrow and they
allow people who have invested over time
to continue to reap the rewards of those
investments but I understand that there
are bad actors and if we don't keep them
out it will spoil this very good thing
that we have there's a real sense of
satisfaction in bringing a case against
someone or stopping someone who's in the
midst of taking money away from other
people one of the most important things
you can do in protecting yourself is to
check out who you're dealing with and
the first place to start with that
research is our website at investor gov
that's a website that that people can
get a lot of information about different
types of investment products but you can
also find out about investment
professionals there to see whether the
person who's selling them securities are
trying to sell them securities is a
licensed individual whether they have a
bad disciplinary history have they been
in trouble before have we sued them
before those are all things you should
know an educated investor makes better
decisions and the more educated
investors we have in our marketplace the
better for everyone
you
