Mystery Man Moving Japan Made More Than 1 Million Trades

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Why are there so many successful lone traders in Japan?

>It was six minutes after the opening bell on Feb. 4, and dozens of big-name stocks were still untraded in Tokyo. Telecommunications giant SoftBank Corp. was among those that hadn’t budged. The offer price fell 5 percent, then more, and still there were no takers.

>Then an order was filled: 300,000 shares at 6,714 yen -- worth just over 2 billion yen, or almost $20 million. Other buyers followed, momentum built, and the stock ended the day as one of only two gainers in the Nikkei 225 Stock Average.

>The man who made the market for SoftBank that winter morning was sitting in pajamas in a bedroom cluttered with comic books. He was leaning into the glare of four computer screens and munching a carrot -- something to calm his stomach.

>Ninety minutes later, he cashed out with a profit of 140.6 million yen. Then it was on to the next trade for the former video game champion and pachinko gambler who goes by the name CIS. The 35-year-old day trader says he made 6 billion yen, after taxes, betting on Japanese stocks last year.

>CIS, pronounced sis, means death in classical Japanese. The nickname is a holdover from his gaming days, when he used to crush foes in virtual wrestling rings and online fantasy worlds. “Games taught me to think fast and stay calm,” he said over tea at Tokyo’s Hotel Grand Palace a few days after the SoftBank trade.

>Early in his career, CIS made a name for himself trash talking on 2channel, Japan’s most heavily visited online bulletin board. He became notorious for such lines as “Not even Goldman Sachs can beat me in a trade” and “Excuse me while I go flush some cheap wine that only cost me 800,000 yen.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-25/mystery-man-moving-japan-made-more-than-1-million-trades