Image: PexelsHarouna Traore (France) from France, using the platform of the broker Valbury Capital, made deals worth € 5.5 billion and made a profit of € 10 million. As a result of the error, the trader made multimillion bids not in test mode, but in “combat” mode. The broker refuses to pay Traore “earned” money,
reports the Financial Times.
What happened?
In June 2017, Aruna Traore opened an account with a British broker Valbury Capital and got € 20,000 from him. In order to master the trading system at the same time, he registered a demo account. A few weeks later, the trader placed orders for 1 billion euros through Valbury Capital and unexpectedly got a real loss of 1 million euros.
According to Traore, until that moment he still thought that he was using virtual currency from an unlimited demo account. Frightened by such losses, he, however, did not report the problem to the broker, but decided to “recoup” and, as a result, earned much more on the futures of companies from the S & P 500 and Euro Stoxx 50 lists.
The story of a novice trader seems incredible, because the amounts and the daily number of transactions for accounts always have a limit. Reuters
confirms that despite the required notifications of limits, in fact, Traore’s opportunities in the Valbury Capital accounting system were unlimited.
Traore took advantage of this and opened positions that many times exceeded even the volumes characteristic of professional traders in investment banks.
Will give money
Traore's actions were not immediately noticed, but a week later Valbury Capital closed its positions and canceled the bids, citing violation of the terms of use of the site.
Traore did not comply with the restrictions established by the contract (although the system itself should monitor their execution and simply not let the trader place an order that exceeds its limits), and did not report the problem at the time of its occurrence. The trader went to court with the aim of collecting 10 million euros from Valbury Capital. Financial Times emphasize that this amount is almost equal to the company's annual income.
Traore's lawyers are of the opinion that the restriction of operations is the responsibility of the broker. In their opinion, the client has the right to receive earnings as a result of his actions on the exchange, despite the technical error. Valbury Capital, in turn, argues that the former analyst at the Traore, had sufficient experience in the financial sector and specifically took advantage of the situation. In the light of these events, experts emphasize the importance of improving the control of brokers' compliance with trade restrictions.
Situations like the one in which Traore found himself happen periodically. So in 2016 in Russia there was a similar case - then a novice trader from Kazan, having only 5.5 million rubles on his account,
was able to conduct currency transactions on the stock exchange for 42 billion rubles. For him, everything ended not so rosy - he completely lost all his money and still owed the broker more than 9 million rubles.
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