Qualified Eligible Participant - QEP

Any rube can buy stock. You can wander into a broker's office with your bare feet, overalls, and Fleet Farm hat...and, as long as you have the money, they will purchase stocks for you.

But the government and the financial community at large considers you unsophisticated (to be fair, you did just spit tobacco juice on their floor). There are regulations and protections in place to make sure you don’t get fleeced by the city slickers. However, have enough money, and you can step out from this protection. You can still wear the overalls and Fleet Farm hat if you want, but with enough cash in the financial markets, you can brush off some of these restrictions.

In short, you can become a qualified eligible participant. It's a designation related to the Commodities Exchange Act. To pass the test, you must have $2 million in investments and fulfill some other monetary requirements. Having joined the QEP club, weirder, riskier investments become open to you. It's like getting the password to an underground club, where you can gamble on monkey wrestling and join a bare-knuckle boxing league. Only, in real life, these new horizons include things like hedge funds limited only to QEPs.