Only a few years ago, a truck used to come down your street. You set the bin out the night before, and by morning it was empty. The service was delivered, paid for by the household waste collection tax, and written in black and white into the intercommunal budget. That truck is slowly fading from […]
On 6 February 2026, Stellantis shares lost 25% in a single session, taking with them an illusion carefully maintained for twenty years: these savers had not bought a “protected” investment; they had sold their bank a catastrophe insurance policy disguised as a coupon. Some buy-back valuations now show -99% on instruments stamped “with safety barrier”, and yet the French structured products market has tripled in four years to reach €60 billion in net inflows in 2025, because no other product generates as much revenue for banks. The mechanics are crystal clear once you strip away the marketing: you surrender the dividends, you cap your gains at the coupon, and you retain 100% of the downside risk beyond a barrier whose statistical robustness amounts to sophistry, while one in five CAC 40 stocks has experienced a drawdown exceeding -50% over the past twenty years. Belgium settled the matter as early as 2011 with an FSMA moratorium that eliminated single-stock barrier autocalls from the retail market, without any collapse of the savings market; France, meanwhile, is still publishing AMF/ACPR mapping reports calling for “more financial education”. At some point, we will have to stop pretending.