🦁 The lion that takes down trading scammers

French trading-course coaches made millions off your losses. We expose them.

You pay €2,000 for a course. The coach pockets it. He sends you to his affiliated broker. The broker b-books you. You lose. The broker shares its margin with the coach. You re-pay for an 'advanced' course. Multiplied by 50,000 French victims. Here is the file.

5.0/5 on 177 reviews · 216 members · 17 years desk · Zero broker affiliation

Join the desk → $60/month Follow @DerivativeProFR

« 17 years of derivatives desk. Zero broker affiliation. The market as it really is. »

97%. Not an opinion. A public statistic.

97% of amateur day traders lose money over 300 days (newtrading.fr study on 20,000 traders). 75–90% per ESMA/CFTC quarterly broker reports. 87.3% per FFAJ Japan public stats. Stable for 20 years, regardless of which trainer you pick.

Yet the French "trading course" market is worth more than €50M per year. ALTI Trading claims 160,000 members. Interactiv Trading, UGK, Graphseo, CentralCharts, Benoist Rousseau, Krechendo, Xeilos, Yann Darwin / Greenbull and dozens more pull in thousands of euros per sale.

If 97% lose despite paying, what's the course actually for? Answer: you're not the customer. You're the product.

The infernal triangle: coach → broker → propfirm

As Djouad demonstrated in his viral X article (Feb 28, 2025 — 1.18M views): "Your broker and your affiliated trainer both win whether you lose or not."

  1. You buy a €2,000 course. The coach gets paid.
  2. He sends you to his partner broker via a tracking link. The broker pays him 30% of your first deposit.
  3. The broker b-books you. When you lose (97% odds), the house keeps the money.
  4. The coach also pushes you to a propfirm (FTMO, FundedNext). You pay $500–$1,000 for an evaluation. You fail. You re-pay. The coach gets 30% of each.
  5. After 6 months: you've spent €2,000 + $500 + $2,000 in evaluations = ~€4,500 gone. Coach got ~€2,750. You still don't know how to trade.

The 7 destructive patterns

  1. The magic mentor. "I made $1M in 6 months." No verifiable track record.
  2. Artificial complexity. The complexity is invented to justify the price tag.
  3. FOMO marketing. "Only 3 spots left!" Scarcity bias manipulation.
  4. The pyramid. You fail Module 1, you buy Module 2, then VIP. The ladder never stops.
  5. Broker promo codes. "Use my code for $100 free." He gets 30% of your deposit.
  6. Propfirm partnerships. Same scheme with FTMO/FundedNext.
  7. No microstructure taught. Because once you understand A-book/B-book and dealer hedging, you stop paying.

What we propose instead

Djellal Djouad, 17 years on derivatives desks (Goldman, SocGen, Knight, Allianz, Trafigura, VTB), wrote FX Traders vs Brokers ($9.99 Kindle) which dissects broker microstructure chapter by chapter.

And runs Derivatives Trading at $60/month with:

🇫🇷 Version française