Trump says everyday Americans deserve a chance to buy higher-risk ‘alternative’ investments. Critics say this could lead to big losses for small investors

On a summer day in 2018, Cathy Shubert, then 58, hopped in her Toyota Rav 4 and drove to the Jacksonville, Florida, office of Mario Payne, an investment adviser at the financial services firm Raymond James. She had a lot on her mind. She was not happy with her job at a local bank branch and wanted to see if Payne thought she had saved enough to retire.

“He said what I was retiring with would carry me and everything would be wonderful,” she remembered. “I went home and told my husband, ‘Oh my God, I want you to go meet him.’”