

Mystery Man Who Moves Japanese Markets Made More Than 1M Trades - ra
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-09-25/mystery-man-moving-japan-made-more-than-1-million-trades

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ersii
If you're generally interested in asset trading and came looking at this story
for lessons to learn, these are the two I found in the story:

* Cut your losses quickly and with determination, while you should let your winners run as long as possible.

* Buy stocks that is being bought. Sell stocks that are being sold. (In other words, keep track of the stock order flow. Bid/asks).

Feel free to complement this, if I missed anything. In general an interesting
read/story.

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pumpkinattwelve
This was pure gambling. Unless he statistically did the sums (nothing
mentioned in the article), this was pure and simple gambling (probably going
off candlestick trading which is big in Japan). In the finance world, this is
also called dumb money.

Remember kids, there are two types of traders:

    
    
      1. Quants
    
      2. Gamblers
    

Know which one you are.

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antr
From your generalisation we can then say that LTCM falls under "Quants", and
Warren Buffet under "Gamblers".

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seanmcdirmid
Warren buffet is definitely a quant (he does his homework) even if he doesn't
use heavy duty math (though I'm sure he has access to that).

~~~
antr
Then you are using the wrong term. Value investors (those who use models such
as DCF and DDM) are not considered 'quants' in the investment community. My
point is, quants can be speculators too (and more often than not they are). I
just wanted to point out (in a somewhat pedantic manner) that the above
comment is just a random comment, without any substance.

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Humjob
It's incredibly difficult in the long run to make money by day trading. You
need to be in the top 20% of trading ability to just break even (meaning, 80%
of people who day trade outright lose money) and among the top 2-3% of traders
if you want to make any substantial profits.

I personally take Charlie Munger's approach of going long a US equity index
with most of my money and then using leftover funds to exploit what I perceive
as structural mispricings in different asset classes/financial markets that I
think will correct themselves in the short/medium term. Bitcoins, for example,
have been a fun ride since I bought some at the start of 2013.

See this study on day traders for more info:

[http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/odean/papers/Day%20Traders/...](http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/odean/papers/Day%20Traders/Day%20Trade%20040330.pdf)

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rurounijones
"he owns two apartment buildings, the larger of which—a modernist cube in
central Tokyo with a French bar on the ground floor"

Hmm, that information seems a little too identifying.

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seanmcdirmid
Not for Tokyo.

~~~
thret
Street addresses barely qualify as identifying in Tokyo.

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fdsary
How can we make this title a complete aliteration?

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JacobAldridge
Moments Matter: Marvelous Mystery Man Makes Movements, Moves Markets,
Multiplies Millions. Maybe.

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thirdtruck
Reminds me of a Ghost in the Shell plot, where one man wrote software that
dominates the Japanese market. I'd make a joke, but that would fall into
spoiler territory.

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Tycho
BBC recently ran a two part documentary about traders and day-traders. It was
called Millions By The Minute. It was quite entertaining (not very informative
though).

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greeneggs
I don't know if day trading and currency trading are more common in Japan than
other countries, but low interest rates certainly encourage gambling. Here are
two more articles on Japanese amateur currency traders and day traders:

[1]
[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/business/worldbusiness/16h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/business/worldbusiness/16housewives.html)
[2]
[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/business/yourmoney/19day.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/business/yourmoney/19day.html)

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JacobAldridge
Single page -
[http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/818014?type=blo...](http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/818014?type=bloomberg)

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leoh
For the curious, here is the Japanese Wikipedia page about cis which the
article mentions:
[http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cis_(%E6%8A%95%E8%B3%87%E5%AE%B...](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cis_\(%E6%8A%95%E8%B3%87%E5%AE%B6\))

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VexXtreme
Most Japanese day traders are ex-pachinko players, i.e. degenerate gamblers.
Nothing to see here.

~~~
_random_
But day trading _is_ gambling. Also degenerates don't make money.

