I originally wrote very real potential for upside and weakened it by dropping the "very", specifically thinking about the drag on leveraged ETFs... :) Guess I didn't go far enough.

I feel like this is in the weeds though: some bad investments people get suckered into have extremely high and diversified risk of total loss, but at _best_ can only return a few percent in a year.

Not only are they negative EV, but even if you get lucky and it pays off you only end up with money market fund like income. Deals that no one who was informed and knew how to do the relevant math would ever take.