Novice Trader Made Millions With 'Dummy Account' And His Stockbroker Wasn't Happy

An amateur trader in France has filed a lawsuit against a British brokerage firm after it seized the massive profit he made trading stocks on what he initially believed was a "dummy account."

Harouna Traore, 41, made over €10 million ($11.53 million) in profit on Valbury Capital’s trading platform. Initially, Traore believed it was just for practice, but it turned out to be real, Financial Times reported Thursday.

It all began in 2017 when Traore enrolled in an equities futures trading course in Paris and then decided to create a demo account with Valbury, according to Finance Magnates. He then set up a real €20,000 ($23,000) account after making some practice trades.

Under the impression that he was still making trades via the demo platform, Traore made €1 billion-worth ($1.15 billion) of orders in U.S. and European futures equities.

After having lost profits totaling €1 million ($1.15 million), he realized that the deals he made involved real money. Traore panicking then increased his investments, making €5 billion ($5.76 billion) in orders in an attempt to recoup his losses.

Indeed, Traore managed to turn a profit of over €10 million ($ 11.6 million). But, Valbury claimed the novice trader had breached his contract and the company then voided and canceled all his profits.

Traore took action in January and filed a summons in court claiming that Valbury breached its contract with him and that it should pay him the money he claims it owes him.

Robert Falkner, a partner at Reed Smith, the law firm representing Valbury, told Financial Times that the firm has denied all allegations against them.

"We are familiar with the spurious allegations made by the French arcade trader Mr. Traoré (a seasoned market risk analyst formerly employed by Reuters) which are strongly denied as wholly without merit and will be vigorously contested," Faulker said. "This matter is now before the courts so that we consider it inappropriate to comment further."

Traore’s lawyers noted that their client was not a professional trader and that the deals he made were profitable after he realized he was working with actual money.