Jérôme Kerviel Mayor of Pont l'Abbé, Kerviel stood for a seat on the local council with the Union for a Popular Movement party but was not elected. Kerviel joined the middle office of the bank Société Générale in the summer of 2000, working in its compliance department. In 2005 he was promoted to the bank's Delta One products team in Paris where he was a junior trader. Société Générale's Delta One business includes program trading, exchange-traded funds, swaps, index futures and quantitative trading. Christian Noyer, governor of the Bank of France, has described Kerviel as a "computer genius"; however, sources within Société
Day trader trader but both types of traders can trade in the same markets. Previously seen as a niche market, or something for institutional speculators, the foreign exchange market (forex) by 2010 had increased exponentially to an average daily volume of about $4 trillion USD worldwide, with spot retail forex trades accounting for an estimated 10% of that volume. Possible reasons for the surge in retail forex trading include the now high margin requirements in individual U.S. equities (stocks) for day traders imposed after 2001, and apparent overt manipulation of commodities markets by banks, making commodity futures markets a less desirable market