The only difference between a retail investor and a pro is that a pro dedicates more time to his trade. Apart from that, investing has become pretty much a level playing field where the pros have little or no advantage over the man in the street, if you discount illegal insider trading.
The China stockmarket, unlike most other markets, is driven largely by retail investors. Many are pouring life savings, salaries, mortgaged loans and anywhere else they can get money from to blindly invest in stocks. And yes, it is going to be an ugly ending and I think in the not too distant future too. If you want to take advantage of that, you don’t need to invest directly in the China market. Any market will do. If a crash came about, it will have an immediate knock on effect throughout world markets, which will all probably crash pretty much simultaneously. You saw this happening in the tiny mini crash couple of months back. There is no knowing what the catalyst for a worldwide crash will be. It can come from anywhere from a dollar collapse, housing collapse in US, shooting interest rates in UK, war in Iran, China banking crisis and so on. The global credit bubble is building up to one spectacular bursting point and it will take very little to push it over the edge. Whether China affects world markets or vice versa, the result will be the same – a global crash.