Résumé
In financial law, the conception of “protected investors” appears to reveal many uncertainties while at the same time, investor protection measures are numerous. This raises a number of questions. The first part of this research shows that there is a need to clarify this conception. Such a need results mainly from the detailed description of existing uncertainties and their negative consequences on investor protection objective and measures. These difficulties, which are about the concept of investor, the logic of the protection and its criteria, are a source of legal uncertainty. As a result, the quality of the protection is undermined in many different ways. The second part of this research is an attempt to clarify these points. It focuses on the legal concept of investor and on investor protection policy. The idea is to amend the legislative part of the French Monetary and Financial Code to introduce a definition of the word « investor », which relies on the suggestion that an investor should have legal personality and that there should be an act of investment. The legal definition suggested for the concept of “act of investment” also helps to draw distinctions between the legal concept of investor on the one hand, and those of shareholder, client and consumer, on the other hand. The investor protection policy which is then described lies on grounds that may look familiar, but to state them more precisely appears to be useful. For this policy to be fully implemented, and taking into account the definitions or amendments brought to the categories of “investor” and of “qualified investor”, a new legal category of actors in the financial markets needs to be elaborated.