I want protection from myself because society is impossibly complex for a single mind to understand.

If I buy edible stuff I trust that it won't poison me or kill me. If I drive a car I expect it respond to my commands and I expect other drivers to have a minimum amount of knowledge that they can actually assume and understand the risks of driving.

The protections that the SEC and other bodies expect in this area are quite reasonable if you understand that there is no such thing as "personal" freedom; your well-being and successes and failures tie into the rest of society at large. Maybe if you lose part of your savings that might be tolerable for all, but if in the process of making a bad investment you leave yourself and your family homeless, get into drug addiction, and create a large burden to those around you, it's hard to consider that to be a simple personal issue.

As long as there is government and capitalism we can only hope to be somewhere in between.