One can appreciate a visceral reaction against allowing futures on election results, but the reasons against it are not obviously compelling. As a starting matter, elections do have economic consequences, including impacts on inflation and on particular industries, so there are economic reasons why market participants may want to go long or short to hedge, or why others may wish to speculate and provide liquidity. Secondly, polling, which is obviously allowed, has much the same impact as a…

It is difficult to understand the logic of ignoring a bank's unrealized losses on its banking book, especially when those losses are determinable. Further, it is hard to justify forcing securities holders of the bank to take losses when the accounting regulations deprive them of information that is clearly material.  

Commissioners Uyeda and Pierce produced fairly blistering dissents. The SEC seems to be pushing for a system where the only products available, at least to retail investors, (except behind closed doors) are index funds. The SEC is simply increasing the risks associated with providing advice to retail investors. It's getting to the point that the only information a broker-dealer should give them is "go look it up on the internet."

The fact that hedge funds, for example, are subject to many of the same risks as banks does not mean that bank-like regulation should be applied to them. Banks are regulated because they take deposits from retail investors and some (or maybe all) of their deposits are backed by the FDIC.