Mr Medcraft took up the senior role at the OECD in 2017 after being chairman of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission between 2011 and 2017. He heads the part of the OECD that reviews a range of markets issues including competition, international investment, consumer protection, education, superannuation/pensions, insurance and financial markets and fintech.

The OECD markets committee is made up of senior regulators from around the globe. It is currently chaired by Aerdt Houben, Director of the Financial Markets Division at De Nederlandsche Bank.

Global markets have been hit by a retail trading frenzy in recent weeks leading to massive spikes in the values of shares in a suite of largely unloved and underperforming companies. Many of the day traders have described the frenzy as an act of revenge against what they see as unfair tactics used by large professional investment institutions.

In the most prominent example, shares of US-listed GameStop surged over 1500 per cent last week as an army of retail day traders on Reddit forum WallStreetBets rushed to buy shares in order to create a “short squeeze” against major American hedge funds that had bet against the struggling company’s share price.

The trading frenzy in GameStop and other stocks put various trading platforms under immense financial pressure, most notably Robinhood, the commission free platform favoured by retail day traders in the US. Robinhood has since raised billions of dollars in fresh capital from its investors. One prominent US hedge fund, Melvin Capital, was forced to seek a $US2.8 billion capital injection from other funds after it was caught on the wrong side of the GameStop trade.

Mr Medcraft pointed to a range of policy responses that would work to provide better safeguards for both brokers and investors as well as providing greater transparency for smaller investors.

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This would include altering a key element of how markets work by forcing traders to settle their purchases of shares on the same day they order them rather than the current system where people have two business days to ensure they have enough money in their settlement account and the debit occurs.

“Same day versus two-day settlement would reduce size of settlement risk (ie, calls on capital) on parties like Robinhood,” Mr Medcraft said.

He suggested other policy responses could include low-level transaction taxes to reduce high speed trading (that is driven by sophisticated algorithms) that gives Wall Street a huge advantage over regular traders.

The OECD may also consider forcing hedge funds to disclose their short-selling positions and ending secret briefings between institutional investors and companies.

For retail shareholders, Mr Medcraft pointed to protections like financial literacy tests for traders and stopping companies like Robinhood from on-selling retail trader data to institutional firms.