I Wish We’d Drawn This Line Earlier: When “Friendly Content” Turns Into Illegal Advice

As someone who’s been in the trading world long enough to watch marketing evolve from cold calls to Instagram stories, I honestly wish rules like Spain’s CNMV guidance had been made clear years ago. For a long time, social media blurred the line between education, opinion, and outright solicitation. Influencers casually recommending brokers, answering DMs, and getting paid based on sign-ups or trading volume became “normal”, even though it was effectively unlicensed client acquisition. This new stance finally calls it what it is: risk. Markets don’t need more hype disguised as friendly advice.

They need clarity, accountability, and real separation between advertising and regulated financial activity. If a creator is incentivized by performance, they are no longer neutral, and if a firm allows that behavior, it owns the consequences. I wish more people in the industry had understood this earlier, before trust in financial content eroded so badly.