Paris, December 31, 2018:
Now 60, Dupont must come to terms with the fact that his investment strategy has misfired horribly.
Excluding dividends, he finds that he has lost money on his 20 years of daily investments in the euro zone banking sector a staggering 98.5 percent of the time.
Only about 1.5 percent of his investments were made at a lower level than the index's close on Dec. 28, 2018.
He is not sure who to blame.
The great financial crisis of 2008 seems a credible culprit.
But his American cousin Jonathan Bridges, who 20 years ago followed a parallel strategy of daily investments in the U.S. banking index, has had a success rate of about 50 percent.
That's even though the subprime loans that were a major factor in the crisis were centred on the United States.
Dupont might also look for clues in the euro zone economy's sluggish growth rate, the sovereign debt crisis of 2011 or ultra-low, and at times negative, interest rates.
But none of that can fully explain to him why the bloc's banking index has lost about two-thirds of its value over 20 years.
If he wasn't such a rational man, he'd almost think the euro was cursed.
