Most investments leave the outcome open-ended. You put money into a stock, a fund, or a bond, and whatever the market does, you feel it in full. Up years are rewarding. Down years can be painful. Structured products offer a different way of thinking about that relationship.

Rather than simply accepting whatever return the market delivers, these products allow you to define in advance how you want to participate. How much upside do you want access to? How much downside are you willing to absorb? The answers to those questions can be built directly into the investment itself.

Markets have historically delivered strong long-term returns. The average investor has not come close to capturing them.

This is not primarily a story about bad investments. It is a story about behavior. The funds most investors hold have performed reasonably well. The investors holding them have not, because they have bought and sold at the wrong times, reacted to headlines, and made decisions driven by emotion rather than plan.

The result is a persistent, well-documented gap between what investments earn and what investors actually realize. And it is more costly than most people assume.