Japanese day trader makes $54 million a year

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Jason Clenfield writes in Businessweek that tax returns show that a former video game champion and pachinko gambler who goes by the name CIS traded 1.7 trillion yen ($15 Billion) worth of Japanese equities in 2013 — about half of 1 percent of the value of all the share transactions done by individuals on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The 35-year-old day trader whose name means death in classical Japanese says he made 6 billion yen ($54 Million), after taxes, betting on Japanese stocks last year. The nickname is a holdover from his gaming days, when he used to crush foes in virtual wrestling rings and online fantasy worlds.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/14/...-gamer-makes-millions-moving-markets-in-japan
 
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If true incredible however, I have my doubts as they had access to guy's tax returns but not to his actual name and they are quoting him by his gamer handle...
 
I think Japan has a very interesting stock market. I have tested some persistent short term edges that are different than what I've seen here in the US. But non-Japan residents will have a hard time capturing those edges because of comparatively high transaction costs at IB.
 
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CIS is one of a handful of Japanese day traders that are quite famous from the amount of money they have made after the advent of online trading and cheap commissions. Takashi Kotegawa handlename BNF was CIS's mentor/colleague and their detailed discussions on a daily basis on the web are available but unfortunately in Japanese. "Proof" of their prowess include television interviews while actually trading orders in quantums of USD100,000; glimpses of their trading accounts showing enormous balances in the USD10's of millions plus official listings at the Tokyo Stock Exchange of their enormous positions as major shareholders in certain Japanese companies. Takashi Kotegawa made in excess of USD200million and has bought a large building in front of Akihabara station, Tokyo for USD100 million. Interestingly BNF is supposed to stand for Victor Niederhoffer, Takashi's trading hero just that Japanese can't distinguish between the letters V and B.
 
R1234 said:
I think Japan has a very interesting stock market. I have tested some persistent short term edges that are different than what I've seen here in the US. But non-Japan residents will have a hard time capturing those edges because of comparatively high transaction costs at IB.
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From the news reports, it looks like this trader targets gains of at least several pct on each his positions, so IB's roundtrip commission of 0.16pc is certainly no concern there.

Agree though that the market seems to be fundamentally different, but this is true with other markets as well. For example continental europe does not have the fragmentation issues that exist in the US, while the LSE is just a shell with all trading seemingly going on off exchange (spread betting, swaps, CFDs) to avoid the stamp duty.

Also, was surprised that the exchange did not subsequently cancel the error trade with which this trader made his first millions.

A banker, instead of selling 1 share for 600k yen, offered 600k shares for 1 yen, of a company with only about 20k shares outstanding. The trader got 3k of these shares for a steal and resold at 600k a share.

If you think about it, it's crazy that the exchange even let this order through, but this is the state of today's markets. No intelligent error checking, just the speed counts.
 
freedinner said:
A banker, instead of selling 1 share for 600k yen, offered 600k shares for 1 yen, of a company with only about 20k shares outstanding. The trader got 3k of these shares for a steal and resold at 600k a share.

If you think about it, it's crazy that the exchange even let this order through, but this is the state of today's markets. No intelligent error checking, just the speed counts.
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Allowing all trades to stand is much fairer than the idiotic way US exchanges behave in clearly erroneous situations. There has got to be some penalty for being an idiot but US exchanges let people get away scot-free.
 
Well, the first time you enter an order by mistake, lets say in after hours and sell shares for 1 c, in a $50 name, lets see if you walk the talk.
 
theres a rumor that the CIS trader is really Tim Sykes in Kimono.

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