Mystery Gamer Makes Millions Moving Markets In Japan

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Mystery Gamer Makes Millions Moving Markets In Japan

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday September 28, 2014 @06:43AM from the money-diffusion dept.

HughPickens.com writes 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.

"Games taught me to think fast and stay calm." CIS says he barely got his degree in mechanical engineering, having devoted most of college to the fantasy role-playing game Ultima Online. Holed up in his bedroom, he spent days on end roaming the game's virtual universe, stockpiling weapons, treasure and food. He calls this an early exercise in building and protecting assets. Wicked keyboard skills were a must. He memorized more than 100 key-stroke shortcuts — control-A to guzzle a healing potion or shift-S to draw a sword, for example — and he could dance between them without taking his eyes off the screen. "Some people can do it, some can't," he says with a shrug. But the game taught a bigger lesson: when to cut and run. "I was a pretty confident player, but just like in the real world, the more opponents you have, the worse your chances are," he says. "You lose nothing by running." That's how he now plays the stock market. CIS says he bets wrong four out of 10 times. The trick is to sell the losers fast while letting the winners ride. "Self-control is so important. You have to conserve your assets. That's what insulates you from the downturns and gives you the ammunition to make money."

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See mom? by penguinoid · 2014-09-28 06:48 · Score: 5, Funny

Let me play games all day and some day I'll be rich!

--
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
1. Re:See mom? by phantomfive · 2014-09-28 07:16 · Score: 2
  
  If he really did make $54 million, then he's more than a kid with ADD. Not even an idiot makes that kind of money on the stock market.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
2. Re:See mom? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 07:27 · Score: 1
  
  So rich that one day, I'll be able to sit inside all day in my own basement!
3. Re:See mom? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 07:28 · Score: 0
  
  do you even have 1 million, let alone 54 million?
  pure green jelly
4. Re:See mom? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 07:30 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  There are idiots with waaay more money than that, gotten from trust-funds. So what's your point? Money doesn't make you smart. Getting money from the stock market only takes an understanding of the stock market. And an understanding of the stock market doesn't make you smart either, just rich. He barely passed mechanical engineering class. So again, your point?
5. Re:See mom? by WaterDamage · 2014-09-28 08:02 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Percentage wise he made less than 0.40%!!! The Nikkei stock exchange went up 57% in 2013 in Japan but he only made 0.40% (yes, you see that correctly, less than half of one percent) so no I will not back down from my statement that he is an idiot with ADD. The article does not state how big his trading account is so I had to use the $15 billion total figure for my calculation but nonetheless I'm safely assuming that he must be trading with a few hundred million dollars alone to reach trillions in trading volume.
6. Re:See mom? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 08:04 · Score: 0
  
  Seriously? Just because it's an up year, you have to be an idiot to be able to lose money? There are just so many troubling aspects of such an ignorant reply, I'm not even gonna waste my time getting started.
  What ass did you get that info out from?
  Try to study and earn money on the markets _consistently_. You'll be amazed how easy it is to lose your money, in any market condition.
  Making money consistently in the markets is hard. It gets harder the more you try to control risk..
7. Re:See mom? by sumdumass · 2014-09-28 08:09 · Score: 1
  
  And you can move your mom in upstairs rent free to thank her for all the time she let you live in her basement.
8. Re:See mom? by phantomfive · 2014-09-28 08:24 · Score: 1
  
  The article suggests he started with 10,000 a decade ago. If he did that, then he's impressive.
  
  However, there's not really much evidence, and he might as well have inherited it. In which case, you have a point.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
9. Re:See mom? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 09:10 · Score: 0
  
  It said his trades accounted for 0.4% of the entire trade volume of the Nikkei, not whatever nonsense you're spouting. didn't even have to read TFA for that
10. Re:See mom? by oji-sama · 2014-09-28 09:11 · Score: 1
  
  Percentage wise he made less than 0.40%!!! The Nikkei stock exchange went up 57% in 2013 in Japan but he only made 0.40% (yes, you see that correctly, less than half of one percent) so no I will not back down from my statement that he is an idiot with ADD. The article does not state how big his trading account is so I had to use the $15 billion total figure for my calculation but nonetheless I'm safely assuming that he must be trading with a few hundred million dollars alone to reach trillions in trading volume.
  Why is that a safe assumption? 15000000 / 54000000 = ~278. Thus one 54 million trade a day is way more than enough to get high trade volume. 41 trades one million dollar each a day would also be enough. I would guess the actual trade amount would be somewhere between those values.
  Unless I managed to fail my calculations.
  
  --
  It is what it is.
11. Re:See mom? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 09:21 · Score: 0
  
  Gambler gets lucky, attributes his temporary success to skills and experience. News at 11.
12. Re:See mom? by khallow · 2014-09-28 10:13 · Score: 1
  
  so no I will not back down from my statement that he is an idiot with ADD.
  A wealthy idiot who probably made more in ten years trading stocks than you'll make in several lifetimes. If the "idiot" achieves by their actions a considerable gain (be it money or not), then maybe you should reconsider whether the term is appropriate.
13. Re:See mom? by ShanghaiBill · 2014-09-28 10:52 · Score: 2
  
  The article does not state how big his trading account is so I had to use the $15 billion total figure for my calculation
  This is almost certainly wrong. You don't need $15B to make $15B in total turnover. He could be buying and selling hundreds of times a day, or tens of thousands of times a year, rolling over the same money.
  
  I'm safely assuming that he must be trading with a few hundred million dollars alone to reach trillions in trading volume.
  The "trillion" refers to yen, which are worth less than a penny each.
14. Re:See mom? by retchdog · 2014-09-28 10:53 · Score: 2
  
  there really is no baseline here for a meaningful comparison, and some people do just get lucky. there's that old joke about applying to work for N banks and making a different prediction about a fixed set, S, of stocks to each one; if N=2^|S|, you'll sweep one of them, guaranteed.
  having a large liquidity pool also simply lets you make high-risk investments that others literally can't. there's nothing intrinsically wrong with this, but neither should you conclude that individual merit is the driving factor.
  the article is a puff-piece. the better question to ask about articles like this is "why are they making a big deal out of it right now?". you sometimes get some interesting and disturbing connections, especially when the correlations unfold in the following few months. it rarely has much to do with the putative content.
  
  --
  "They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
15. Re: See mom? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 11:13 · Score: 0
  
  I think I know this guy. He sits around with a laptop all day and writes the algorithms for his own HFT programmes.
16. Re:See mom? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 11:21 · Score: 0
  
  Making money consistently in the markets is hard. It gets harder the more you try to control risk..
  Only if you're looking for a quick payout.
  If you're playing the long game, being conservative pays off big time. Don't buy into startups or fads even if some of them may pan out, don't buy overvalued companies even if you think they will go up before they go down. Asses long-term, consistent profitability rather than obsessing over quarterly earnings.
  Of coarse you need to start with a decent amount of capital to make money that way, but it works.
17. Re:See mom? by Taco+Cowboy · 2014-09-28 11:42 · Score: 1
  
  ... then he's more than a kid with ADD ...
  
  Of course that guy is much more than that
  Here are the quotes which I copied from TFA:
  
  Buy stocks that are being bought, and sell stocks that are being sold>
  Forget the fundamentals - TUNE OUT THE NOISE
  Get out of the hive mindset and bet against the crowd
  And I might like to add that the techniques that the guy applied in his stock trading can be used in other fields as well --- such as, finding a niche, or starting your business, or getting yourself promoted
  When the hive goes West and you are one of those going the same direction, you ain't gonna get much out of it
  
  --
  Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
18. Re:See mom? by khallow · 2014-09-28 11:45 · Score: 2
  
  there's that old joke about applying to work for N banks and making a different prediction about a fixed set, S, of stocks to each one; if N=2^|S|, you'll sweep one of them, guaranteed.
  Except that the cost of making each bet is just the effort to fill out the application. Here, the guy had to put in their own money in on each bet they made. And as a result, they ended up $54 million ahead just last year and they've apparently have been doing well for a ten year period.
  
  This is a rather consistent result over probably tens of thousands of trades. What burns people like this is not that they were somehow one of the few lucky people out of far more people than exist in the world today, but rather that they tend to underestimate the low frequency risks to such trading.
  
  If you are betting using a huge amount of borrowed money (this guy probably is operating on a fair amount of margin given how much wealth growth he claims to have created), then it doesn't take much bad luck or fail to erase your entire holdings.
19. Re:See mom? by phantomfive · 2014-09-28 11:51 · Score: 2
  
  That advice is basically as generic in the stock market as, "buy low sell high." Actually getting it done is the hard part.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
20. Re:See mom? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 13:22 · Score: 0
  
  So easy, why aren't you doing it? Do you make 54 million after taxes a year at your job?
  Throwing a car analogy here. People with older classic cars often ask how much are they worth. Many people spout off these ridiculous high numbers. Bottom line, it is ONLY worth what someone is actually willing to part with their money for. It doesn't matter what others think it is worth if they are not willing to hand over the cold hard cash and put their money where their mouth is.
  Same here, you claim it is easy, the statistics show this and that and everyone can do it but yet you are not willing to get in and prove it. So... STFU.
21. Re:See mom? by rtb61 · 2014-09-28 13:48 · Score: 2
  
  Regardless the individual or corporate day, hour, minute traders are toxic to the corporate market and the destructive influence they have on the management of corporations.
  Two things need to radically change, stamp duties on share transaction need to rise to at least 1% to slow down the desire to trade and the speed of transfer of shares need to be slowed down, so to at least 30 or even 90 days between the the purchase and sale of shares. This will hugely stabilise the share market and have a major influence on the management of companies and the desire to fabricate an illusion about the wealth of a company for short term share gains.
  A push needs to be made to shift value of investment in shares from short term capital gains back to dividends and transaction taxes along with hugely slowed down trades will do that.
  
  --
  Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
22. Re:See mom? by WaterDamage · 2014-09-28 14:33 · Score: 1
  
  This is almost certainly wrong. You don't need $15B to make $15B in total turnover. He could be buying and selling hundreds of times a day, or tens of thousands of times a year, rolling over the same money.
  You must factor in the time settlement of funds. Even as a day trader or HFT trader, you are subject to the T+3 day settlement rule . So if he only had a small trading account with $1,000,000 ($1 Million) dollars he would be able to trade that entire $1 million dollars less than 100 times per year with that amount of money due to the T+3 funds settlement rule. So if you do the math, it would not add up to $15 billion in volume.
  
  Actually, we can speculate that he likely had a trading account with $150,000,000 ($150 million dollars) since that sized account would be able to come close to hitting $15 billion dollars in trading so from this number we can safely speculate that his real gain could have been 33%. While impressive for a trader, he definitely did not beat the market since the market went up by 57% so he traded like a mad man trying to play games in the market only to have the market beat him by a whopping additional 24%!
23. Re:See mom? by WaterDamage · 2014-09-28 14:41 · Score: 1
  
  The article suggests he started with 10,000 a decade ago. If he did that, then he's impressive.
  
  I see no mention of the $10,000 anywhere in this article. Actually the article does not state how much money he had to trade with so unless you have a source we have no idea how big the account was. According to my speculation he likely had $150,000,000 ($150 million dollars) since that sized account would be able to come close to hitting $15 billion dollars in trading per year. Please note that if you factor in T+3 days to settle funds between trades he likely traded less than 100 times in a 365 day cycle.
24. Re:See mom? by WaterDamage · 2014-09-28 14:45 · Score: 1
  
  According to my speculation he likely had $150,000,000 ($150 million dollars) since that sized account would be able to come close to hitting $15 billion dollars in trading per year. Please note that if you factor in T+3 days to settle funds between trades he likely traded less than 100 times in a 365 day cycle. so from this number we can safely speculate that his real gain could have been 33%. While impressive for a trader, he definitely did not beat the market since the market went up by 57% so he traded like a mad man trying to play games in the market only to have the market beat him by a whopping additional 24%!
25. Re:See mom? by phantomfive · 2014-09-28 17:32 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Please note that if you factor in T+3 days to settle funds between trades he likely traded less than 100 times in a 365 day cycle.
  Come on man, at least read the headline of the article, "Made More Than 1 Million Trades". You often don't have to wait for the three day period to trade again if you have a margin account (surely he does), and it typically only takes a day for my trades to settle.
  
  I see no mention of the $10,000 anywhere in this article.
  From page 2: "his fortune snowballed, starting with 1 million yen -- about $10,000 -- in 2000."
  
  Actually the article does not state how much money he had to trade with so unless you have a source we have no idea how big the account was.
  From the article: "Those brokerage statements, from SBI Holdings Inc., showed liquid assets ranging from 4.4 billion yen to 4.8 billion yen."
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
26. Re:See mom? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 20:19 · Score: 0
  
  > If you're playing the long game, being conservative pays off big time.
  Oh really? Are you talking centuries or decades? Ask investors who were in Barings and Lehmans how that worked for them.
  Don't even mention the blue chips which are trading at 20% of their value 5 years ago.
27. Re:See mom? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 20:22 · Score: 0
  
  Does that rule apply to the Japanese market?
28. Re:See mom? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 20:26 · Score: 0
  
  He sounds like a kid with serious ADD trading stocks just to kill time and pretend that he actually knows what the hell he's doing. The market in Japan is up, only an idiot could lose money in a up year. Let's see how well he does when the big boys cash out of the musical chairs games at lightning speed with their HFT algorithms and leave him and the rest of the Muppets holding the bag.
  LOL you tool
  why didnt you make money with this obviuous market upturn in Japan?
  Also he has 54 million dollars and is now drinking cristal down the cleavage of playboy models while you are typing on slashdot
  fucking loser.
29. Re:See mom? by phantomfive · 2014-09-28 21:12 · Score: 1
  
  btw, here's another good tip:
  
  When you are highly confident that the stock will go your direction, invest a lot.
  When you have medium confidence of the stock direction, invest a medium amount,
  When you have low confidence in the stock direction, invest a small amount.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
30. Re:See mom? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 21:41 · Score: 0
  
  While I agree with the transaction tax concept, 1% is excessive and starts to penalize even non-high frequency traders. A mere 0.3% will be sufficient to wipe out this man's entire earnings for the year, and given the potential swings in earnings, 0.2% is probably enough to dissuade the likes of him to continue high frequency gambling. 30 days holding limit also excessively punishes regular shareholders who might get caught holding the sack in a major catastrophe; a 24 hour limit ought to be enough to destroy the day traders' business model of clearing all the positions by the end of each trading day.
31. Re:See mom? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 22:03 · Score: 0
  
  Might still be an idiot. There are many wealthy idiots out there. Might just be lucky. If 10000 daytraders start out with 10000 dollars each and assuming zero sum game one of them is going to end up with a hundred million. And that one is mostly selected by sheer luck. There isn't any hard evidence that daytrading even can be done profitably. If you just look at the results and compare them to gamblers you can argue gambling can be done profitably.
32. Re:See mom? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 22:16 · Score: 0
  
  He is most likely sitting somewhere in front of his computer trading obsessively. But hey, that's life. I hope he can let go of the trading and live for a once. If he first played, then traded for 10 years he is most likely under 40, still plenty of time to actually enjoy life. Go hike on a mountain. Swim in the sea. Hang out with your loved ones. Save the world. Wit hthat money he could schoose the mountain freely, swin in whichever sea he prefers, and actually help some small part of our planet.
33. Re:See mom? by radl33t · 2014-09-28 23:28 · Score: 1
  
  uh yeah or he was trading on margin like any trader does.
34. Re:See mom? by khallow · 2014-09-28 23:50 · Score: 1
  
  If 10000 daytraders start out with 10000 dollars each and assuming zero sum game one of them is going to end up with a hundred million.
  Doesn't work that way unless everyone does all or nothing bets. My view is that it's more likely to stabilize with each one tending to hold a portion with the more competent tending to be the wealthier and portions stabilizing where investment opportunities tend to taper off.
35. Re:See mom? by TheMathemagician · 2014-09-29 00:41 · Score: 1
  
  He probably made ~50 bps pre-tax then which is pretty solid. I think 10-20 bps is considered normal in the FX world (although they have larger notionals). He isn't trading with a few hundred million dollars. He's a "day trader" or in his case more of a "minute trader". He'll be flat every day and be constantly going in and out of stocks making dozens of trades a day trying to cut losses immediately and let profits run. I'm guessing he's a very short-term momentum player and his individual trades mightly "only" be around $100,000 but he'll be putting on a flurry of them as the price moves his way and covering himself with stops.
36. Re:See mom? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-29 01:01 · Score: 0
  
  (disclaimer: not the same AC)
  
  Doesn't work that way unless everyone does all or nothing bets. My view is that it's more likely to stabilize with each one tending to hold a portion with the more competent tending to be the wealthier and portions stabilizing where investment opportunities tend to taper off.
  Doesn't work that way unless it's a relatively free market. What we have in Japan, or around most of the developed world is anything but.
  The modern Japanese economy in particular started under the US occupation after WW2, who intervened for fear if they didn't help, Japan it would turn Communist. Even Japanese got their sovereignty back, the Japanese govenrment continued its own economics controls, such as easy credit to the big banks, which trickle down to easy loans for almost everyone.
  The results is history. Planned economies with govenrment giving out debt freely start out appearing successful: Japan had a miraculous recovery, and the US enjoyed cheap goods that over time improved in quality made by Japan. But when the bubble finally popped, you get Japan's Lost Decades.
  In the absence of a free market, government sets the precedent that it's ok to violate the rights of others to further one's own interests. Being successful under such conditions is not a good indicator that one is intelligent or competent (i.e not an idiot), but whether one possesses the same traits as a psychopath - willing to exploit whatever loophole that exists, violating any rights that gets in the way, ignore the loss of liberty for all. "I got mine, screw yours"
37. Re:See mom? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-29 01:22 · Score: 0
  
  As opposed to the average person on slashdot that sits in front of a monitor for 40-70 hours a week just like that guy and makes a lot less.
38. Re:See mom? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-29 02:31 · Score: 0
  
  It doesn't necessarily apply to the US stock market either. At least I am not subject to any such rules when trading from my Swedish account. My broker just gives me liquid funds corresponding to the payment I am due. And if I withdraw them before the transaction is settled, I am charged interest.
  For European stocks, the time is T+2, so if you sell a US stock and buy an EU one with the money, you are charged one day of interest.
39. Re:See mom? by khallow · 2014-09-29 03:55 · Score: 1
  
  The previous AC was speaking of stock markets. Those are relatively free.
  
  In the absence of a free market, government sets the precedent that it's ok to violate the rights of others to further one's own interests. Being successful under such conditions is not a good indicator that one is intelligent or competent (i.e not an idiot), but whether one possesses the same traits as a psychopath - willing to exploit whatever loophole that exists, violating any rights that gets in the way, ignore the loss of liberty for all. "I got mine, screw yours"
  While I agree, I don't see the connection to the discussion of day trading. It's obviously not particularly moral, but it's not taking candy from babies either. And if this guy is as good at it as he claims, then that's a better thing to be doing from his bedroom than a lot of stuff I can think of. As to his mental outlook, I think that's actually two useful lessons for us all.
  
  First, knowledge learned in one area can be applied elsewhere sometimes in surprising places or ways. Who knew that playing a game could help you become a vigorous trader on a stock market? Well, now we know.
  
  Then there's the mental attitude he speaks of. It takes a considerable mental adjustment to be able to accept such a high rate of failure as routine and develop a feeling for when something has failed or succeeded to the point of abandonment. Sure, it's not so great an outlook for child-rearing, but there's plenty such as trade or commerce of just about anything, where this is a useful approach.
40. Re:See mom? by KamikazeSquid · 2014-09-29 04:59 · Score: 1
  
  It said he made "about half of 1 percent of the value of all the share transactions done by individuals on the Tokyo Stock Exchange." That's not the same thing.
41. Re:See mom? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-29 07:53 · Score: 0
  
  The previous AC was speaking of stock markets. Those are relatively free.
  Well, this AC is pointing out those stock markets aren't actually that relatively free. Day traders profit off of the day to day fluctuations of the market, and government policies can and does have both immediate and systematic effects on those fluctuations. Immediate, as anything govenrment says or does can send speculators on a frenzy. Systematic, policy can affect things like the long term value of money, stability of the economy, viability of select industries.
  While it is true what day traders do isn't rape and pillage, the analogy I would equate to is accepting stolen or counterfeit goods. You're not the one who stole or made the counterfeit, you might not even know it's tainted, but that's the environment your job operates in: a market where big government prints fake money and big corporations trade that fake money.
  
  First, knowledge learned in one area can be applied elsewhere sometimes in surprising places or ways. Who knew that playing a game could help you become a vigorous trader on a stock market? Well, now we know.
  Then there's the mental attitude he speaks of. It takes a considerable mental adjustment to be able to accept such a high rate of failure as routine and develop a feeling for when something has failed or succeeded to the point of abandonment. Sure, it's not so great an outlook for child-rearing, but there's plenty such as trade or commerce of just about anything, where this is a useful approach.
  I don't disagree with that. What I was saying is those things are not signs of not being an idiot, but signs of not having much empathy.
42. Re:See mom? by khallow · 2014-09-29 10:12 · Score: 1
  
  Day traders profit off of the day to day fluctuations of the market, and government policies can and does have both immediate and systematic effects on those fluctuations.
  
  Lots of things can cause fluctuations even the entry of new players or someone deciding to change the size of their investment in a corporation. Government interference is far from unique in this regard.
  
  While it is true what day traders do isn't rape and pillage, the analogy I would equate to is accepting stolen or counterfeit goods.
  This analogy doesn't make sense at all to me. I don't see that it is any better to pretend a government policy or regulation change didn't happen.
  
  What I was saying is those things are not signs of not being an idiot, but signs of not having much empathy.
  Which is part of the lesson IMHO. Training like this can help you turn off empathy when it is inappropriate and/or unhealthy for you.
Buy low, sell high by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 06:49 · Score: 0

I'm sure he had a good couple million to start with, too.
1. Re:Buy low, sell high by Great+Big+Bird · 2014-09-28 06:51 · Score: 1
  
  or Sell Short, Buy Low
2. Re:Buy low, sell high by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 06:55 · Score: 0
  
  except tfa says he buys what's being bought and sells what's being sold
3. Re:Buy low, sell high by alexander_686 · 2014-09-28 09:34 · Score: 1
  
  Which is a momentum strategy. There are plenty of hedge fund that plays that game.
  And that works just fine on the short side as well. You sell short what people are selling. That is hard to do when there is a up-tick rule in place, but I don't know if Japan has that rule or not.
It doesn't take a genius by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 07:01 · Score: -1

You don't have to be a genius or a samurai gamer to make money in a stock market that's rising 57% in one year.
1. Re:It doesn't take a genius by vux984 · 2014-09-28 07:32 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Nevermind the selection bias.
  I mean, maybe its like interviewing lottery winners and asking them what their secret is. Maybe the secret is simply "I played", and "somebody has to win".
  I'm not saying the guy isn't smart or disciplined or has the right mindset to be a trader, but that doesn't mean he's really an "exceptionally" genius at it.
  Literally millions of day traders out there doing technical analysis and picking stocks. Its a bit like monkeys and typewriters in a way. Does the monkey that produces something legible really have any truly special talent?
2. Re:It doesn't take a genius by fafaforza · 2014-09-28 10:32 · Score: 1
  
  You guys make it sound like making millions in the stock market is dead simple. All your posts are missing is a link to an ebook that tell you all the secrets.
  Maybe downplaying his gains makes you feel better about yourselves? But making that kind of scratch doesn't happen by change. Even best advisors from open hedge and mutual funds average around 25%.
3. Re:It doesn't take a genius by retchdog · 2014-09-28 11:00 · Score: 2
  
  it's not simple, but neither is it extremely difficult. the factors he cites are important, and sang froid is much more important than technical analysis if you're playing with your own money. however, from one example you can conclude basically nothing.
  if just 1,000 people all invested their entire savings in a single double-zero roulette roll, you're almost guaranteed to have a few very lucky winners. does this mean it was a good idea? and is it that unreasonable to think there are about 1,000 similar people who tried exactly what this person did, and failed?
  
  --
  "They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
4. Re:It doesn't take a genius by allcoolnameswheretak · 2014-09-28 11:16 · Score: 1
  
  I think what people mean is that daytrading has much in common with gambling. And there are a lot of gamblers. One of them is bound to win the lottery at some point, thanks to pure chance and luck. The difference is, if you win at the stock market, people think you are smart, and write articles about you.
  I tend to see it both ways. If you are smart and know what you're doing, you can give your luck some nudges in the right direction, but you will still need to be lucky to succeed.
5. Re:It doesn't take a genius by vux984 · 2014-09-28 11:21 · Score: 2
  
  You guys make it sound like making millions in the stock market is dead simple. All your posts are missing is a link to an ebook that tell you all the secrets.
  Its not dead simple at all I know this, and there aren't really any real secrets either. The point stands that if someone beats the market by a lot its probably more luck than brains.
  Its like blackjack or poker. The people who 'win' are generally good players, understand the game, are disciplined, etc. I'm sure this guy is all of these things. But winning big? Its just luck. Every trade is a calculated risk -- and probability theory dictates that if you have a bunch of traders all doing this, some will break even, some will lose it all, and some will win big... even if they all play EXACTLY as well as each other. Its just math.
  In fact, day trading as a profession is a fanscinating selection bias -- as some of them lose they stop trading so the ones that are still doing it are the ones who haven't lost yet so any survey of the field at any time is mostly people who are "doing ok or better". (Because anyone doing poorly has had to dropped out.)
  Of course some are better at it than others, and the ones who aren't good at it are more likely to lose and be forced to drop. So the ones still doing it are at least 'good at it'. And as I said, I don't doubt that this person is good at it. But spectacular success is as much luck as anything.
  To put it another way...
  Lets say I put an opportunity in front of you and you correctly determine the risk as being 1% chance to quadruple your money, 20% chance of doubling your money, 20% chance to triple it, 49% chance of breaking just above even, 9% chance of losing 50%, 1% chance of losing it all.
  Clearly this is a very good bet. 90% of the outcomes are positive, and overall its very net positive. It would be smart to take this bet. So if I present this to a few hundred traders... what happens?
  A couple quadruple their money. Are they any smarter or more insightful than the few who lost it all? Why? They all correctly gauged the risk and made the best decision.
  I've found that people fundamentally do NOT understand "risk". Whether its the stock market, gambling, their own health care, or IT related risks.
  This guy is good at analyzing risk and making smart bets, and he's had good winning streak, but being right about the risk and making the best decisions based on it, doesn't mean the risk isn't there. That he didn't lose is just luck.
  Poker is the same way. You can be smart, play well, know all the odds, make all the right calls, and still lose badly.
  Even best advisors from open hedge and mutual funds average around 25%.
  Hell no they don't. Lots of studies have shown that the top hedge funds don't even consistently beat index funds. And after the management expenses the investor usually ends up behind. Look it up.
6. Re:It doesn't take a genius by Kittenman · 2014-09-28 13:10 · Score: 1
  
  You guys make it sound like making millions in the stock market is dead simple. All your posts are missing is a link to an ebook that tell you all the secrets.
  Maybe downplaying his gains makes you feel better about yourselves? But making that kind of scratch doesn't happen by change. Even best advisors from open hedge and mutual funds average around 25%.
  Count the hits, ignore the misses. Maybe he was just lucky. And yes, someone can be that lucky. People win lotteries (not me!). And slashdot wouldn't have an article along the lines of "Several normal people played the stockmarket and on average did so-so".
  
  --
  "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
7. Re: It doesn't take a genius by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 15:31 · Score: 0
  
  What you say applies to life generally. It's all luck, too, but the margins are sometimes a little wider.
  Like in life, we still value the effort. Discounting this man's skill is just sour grapes.
8. Re:It doesn't take a genius by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 23:59 · Score: 0
  
  No, it's not simple. It's so hard that no one has ever been shown to actually be good at it. Studies have consistently shown that the past performance of traders is completely uncorrelated with their future performance. Out of the millions of people trying their hand at trading some of them are bound to get lucky.
It doesn't take a genius by WaterDamage · 2014-09-28 07:06 · Score: 1

Exactly, it's likely he would have done better just from staying long rather than trading. Lets just see how well he does in a down year.
See mom? by WaterDamage · 2014-09-28 07:11 · Score: 1, Flamebait

He sounds like a kid with serious ADD trading stocks just to kill time and pretend that he actually knows what the hell he's doing. The market in Japan is up, only an idiot could lose money in a up year. Let's see how well he does when the big boys cash out of the musical chairs games at lightning speed with their HFT algorithms and leave him and the rest of the Muppets holding the bag.
Largest Ponzi Scheme Ever by Art+Challenor · 2014-09-28 07:11 · Score: 3, Insightful

So, no studying PtoE, company fundamentals, etc. etc. Further proving that the Stock Market is almost entirely disconnected from the underlying companies. Basically, it's a Ponzi scheme.

The US government would have invested Social Security in the Stock Market, but they can't find a spokesperson from the financial industry you can advocate the scheme without drooling at the prospect.
1. Re:Largest Ponzi Scheme Ever by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 07:31 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  The Republicans would have invested Social Security in the Stock Market, but they can't find a spokesperson from the financial industry you can advocate the scheme without drooling at the prospect.
  
  Fixed that for you.
2. Re:Largest Ponzi Scheme Ever by Concerned+Onlooker · 2014-09-28 07:55 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  "Further proving that the Stock Market is almost entirely disconnected from the underlying companies."
  Exactly. I've been wondering for some time just what IS stock price based on? Since it's not based on the soundness of the company (the company doesn't even need to have a P/E!) it seems entirely based on perceived potential of the company and whatever news makes the traders nervous or ecstatic that day.
  Therefore, it seems to me you're better off avoiding fundamentals and instead watching the news and reading sociology books. Oh yeah, and developing ways to do high volume trading one millionth of a second faster than you competitor.
  
  --
  http://www.rootstrikers.org/
3. Re:Largest Ponzi Scheme Ever by mc6809e · 2014-09-28 08:29 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  So, no studying PtoE, company fundamentals, etc. etc. Further proving that the Stock Market is almost entirely disconnected from the underlying companies. Basically, it's a Ponzi scheme.
  This is true mostly for new or trendy companies in trendy spaces. Boring companies that have been around for a long time are often priced based on the future dividends they're expected to pay. They don't get any attention, though, because those that make money on speculating can't make any money by trading them. The speculators and brokers don't want people paying attention to fundamentals. Volumes would plummet so how would they make money? There would be no churn. And then they'd have to sell the million dollar Manhattan apartment where they keep their mistress.
  It's similar to the difference between trading Beanie Babies (or whatever faddy collectible is popular now) and something like wheat.
  
  The US government would have invested Social Security in the Stock Market, but they can't find a spokesperson from the financial industry you can advocate the scheme without drooling at the prospect.
  The US government already invests that money by spending it and leaving a bond in its place.
  And how did they invest it? Well, there are some big craters in Iraq and Afghanistan now. Bingo halls and casinos also seem to have profited.
4. Re:Largest Ponzi Scheme Ever by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 08:41 · Score: 0
  
  Basically, it's a Ponzi scheme.
  
  That phrase doesn't mean what you think it does.
5. Re:Largest Ponzi Scheme Ever by Kjella · 2014-09-28 09:14 · Score: 1
  
  Well, the company itself is only one piece of the puzzle. They're also connected to vendors, customers, competitors, their particular market and the general economy. All of those give a lot of impulses into the system, if your competitor launches a great new product that's bad for you. If your vendor's got supply problems, that's bad for you. If your customers for some reason get mad at you that's bad for you. If they suddenly want something else like tablets instead of your laptops that's bad for you. Growth and recession drags the entire economy up and down. The effects ripple through like waves in a pond and it's never still. Just because there's waves on the surface doesn't mean the tide stops coming in, but if you measure from the bottom of one wave to the top of the next then it might go against the fundamentals. They exist if you're investing in a far longer horizon where today's waves are of no real significance, in the long term the companies that make money go up and the ones who lose money go down.
  That said, belief is often more powerful than the fundamentals until the illusion cracks. For example take the dotcom boom, as long as everyone thinks it's a boom they hold on to their stocks. If it dips, they think now they're getting value and buy more. That happens until the bad news overwhelm the value buyers and the stock really start tanking, which again leads to a stampede out. At every step of the way there's people trying to be ahead of the market, but the day traders don't really influence the long term stock price. They're just there trying to make a margin on the market over-reacting/under-reacting or not grasping all the interrelations at play.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
6. Re:Largest Ponzi Scheme Ever by alexander_686 · 2014-09-28 09:46 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  As Warren Buffet says, in the short run the stock market is a voting machine, in the long run a weighing machine.
  In the long term, the value of a stock is it's future free cash to shareholders, discounted by time and
  risk. Over time this has been proven to be true. P/E is backwards looking, so the fact that you can find a few companies without P/E ratio doesn't prove much. (but yes, it is easier to model and discount cash flows when you have a stable and positive P/E ratio.)
  Short run – yeah – the market runs off on supply and demand, and tends to go with what is popular.
7. Re:Largest Ponzi Scheme Ever by ShanghaiBill · 2014-09-28 11:00 · Score: 1
  
  So, no studying PtoE, company fundamentals, etc. etc. Further proving that the Stock Market is almost entirely disconnected from the underlying companies.
  It proves no such thing. Of course PE ratios and fundamentals are important, but other people are doing it for him. He just follows their lead.
  
  Basically, it's a Ponzi scheme.
  You either have no idea how the stock market works, no idea what a Ponzi Scheme is, or both.
8. Re:Largest Ponzi Scheme Ever by khallow · 2014-09-28 11:33 · Score: 1
  
  So, no studying PtoE, company fundamentals, etc. etc. Further proving that the Stock Market is almost entirely disconnected from the underlying companies. Basically, it's a Ponzi scheme.
  Time scale matters. Long term considerations are completely irrelevant when you won't hold a stock long enough for them to matter. Meanwhile if you're planning to buy and hold for a long time, you shouldn't be trying to time the market or making a lot of trades.
  
  Rather than the silly argument that something is a Ponzi scheme just because one guy profits from a completely different approach to investing than you would take, recognize that it takes a peculiar skill set and effort/focus to be good at any sort of market making or other short term trading. This guy happens to have those skills and to take the effort.
  
  The US government would have invested Social Security in the Stock Market, but they can't find a spokesperson from the financial industry you can advocate the scheme without drooling at the prospect.
  Instead, we have what would, if it were an attempt at investment, be a guaranteed money loser for anyone putting in now, with a built in huge incentive for the federal government to cut back on future benefits in order to pay current benefits. That's the real Ponzi scheme.
  
  And in the process, Social Security as it currently stands lessens ownership of capital (none of that money enables the Social Security pensioner to own even a little bit of a company or other capital), which unlike labor is not declining in value, while dumping that money in the hands of special interests who pick up public funding. Plenty to like about that scheme.
9. Re:Largest Ponzi Scheme Ever by arobatino · 2014-09-28 19:59 · Score: 1
  
  In the long term, the value of a stock is it's future free cash to shareholders, discounted by time and
  risk.
  The magic phrase is Dividend discount model.
10. Re:Largest Ponzi Scheme Ever by alexander_686 · 2014-09-28 23:43 · Score: 1
  
  Nope. The magic phrase is Future "Free Cash Flow" (FCF ) to Shareholders.
  Now, how do you model FFC? Do you care if a company pays out dividends or takes the same cash and does a stock buy back? The only difference between the 2 methods is because of differences in taxes - and maybe some psychological signaling. When does it matter if a company stops paying a dividend but reinvests those earnings into new projects?
  The Dividend Discount Model is a classic model but is one of the simpler ones. I prefer models that use earnings, not dividends. This allows to figure out what I should be paying for a company that has profits but does not pay out a dividend, like Amazon or Google.
  .
11. Re:Largest Ponzi Scheme Ever by TheMathemagician · 2014-09-29 00:52 · Score: 1
  
  Imagine watching a successful surfer and then claiming that, as he hasn't studied Meteorology, Fluid Dynamics or Oceanography, the height of the waves is almost entirely disconnected from the underlying sea level. He's just a short-term momentum player riding the random froth on the waves. The stock market is completely unaffected by these traders just as sea-level is unaffected by surfers.
12. Re:Largest Ponzi Scheme Ever by volmtech · 2014-09-29 03:29 · Score: 1
  
  With time to kill I took my SS statement and calculated the return from investing my contribution in the DOW on the first trading day of the last 40 years. My one hundred forty thousand dollars would now be worth over six hundred fifty thousand. I did the same buying gold with the same return. Do the same with Apple stock, you might feel sick.
Half of one percent by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 07:13 · Score: 0

Because 0.5% just takes way too long to type and read.
1. Re:Half of one percent by fafaforza · 2014-09-28 10:46 · Score: 1
  
  Numbers less than 10 are generally spelled out, and it was after a hyphen, and there is a rule about spelling out numbers at the beginning of the sentence, which might kinda apply here.
New game title by Tablizer · 2014-09-28 07:16 · Score: 1

War & Buh Fett

--
Table-ized A.I.
I remember that Manga by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 07:23 · Score: 0

Its called "Billionaire Girl".
From the same guy that wrote "Spice an Wolf", another economic textbook pretending to be a Manga.
Joke aside, IIRC all profits in day-trading are simply out of sheer luck, not skill.
The value of a company simply does not change all that much over a period of a few hours to be predictable.
1. Re:I remember that Manga by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 07:34 · Score: 0
  
  From the same guy that wrote "Spice an Wolf", another economic textbook pretending to be a Manga.
  Disregard females, acquire apples.
What's good about 4 out of 10 times wrong? by jtara · 2014-09-28 07:23 · Score: 2

| CIS says he bets wrong four out of 10 times.
That's not at all impressive.
Good trading strategies can return positive results if you bet wrong more than half the time. I'd be impressed if he can bet wrong 9 times out of 10, and still make a profit.
1. Re:What's good about 4 out of 10 times wrong? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 07:43 · Score: 0
  
  Good trading strategies can return positive results if you bet wrong more than half the time. I'd be impressed if he can bet wrong 9 times out of 10, and still make a profit.
  Agreed, being right in the first place is cheating.
2. Re:What's good about 4 out of 10 times wrong? by jtara · 2014-09-28 09:25 · Score: 1
  
  It's nice if you're right.
  It's even nicer if you can make money even if you are wrong.
  And better still if you can make money while being wrong most of the time.
  You are mistaken if you think making money trading equities has anything to do with being right.
  While I am out of the game (partner who was responsible for all expenses wouldn't spend on infrastructure improvements - my mistake was not kicking in from my own share of profits... he did not understand simple physics, and could not convince him it was a war of escalation) I did high-frequency trading from 1999 to 2003. When you are holding for milliseconds, you don't care about right or wrong. You care that your winners out-run your losers. We did thousands of trades every day, and made money nearly every day. Probably a handful of days when we had a loss and don't think we ever sustained a weekly loss. Certainly never a monthly one. We had no opinion on direction of the market or direction of the stock. All we cared is that our opening position (long or short) had some advantage.
3. Re:What's good about 4 out of 10 times wrong? by RuffMasterD · 2014-09-28 12:52 · Score: 1
  
  Oh yeah? The best strategy can bet wrong up to 11 times out of 10, and still make a profit.
  
  --
  Human Rights, Article 12: Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
Lousy return by Snotnose · 2014-09-28 07:28 · Score: 0

He bet 15 billion and made 50 million. That's about a 0.3% ROI, which IMHO falls into the noise range. Guy is more lucky than good.
1. Re: Lousy return by stdarg · 2014-09-28 07:41 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  No.. $15 billion volume not investment. He could have started with 1M and traded 15000 times.
2. Re:Lousy return by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 07:45 · Score: 0
  
  He doesn't own 15 billion - he has made transactions worth 15 Billion. It's not clear from the article how much he actually has invested in the stock market, but theoretically it could be a single yen. You just can't compute the ROI from the numbers given.
3. Re:Lousy return by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 08:47 · Score: 0
  
  If you assume he traded 100% of his capital every day (a reasonable upper limit), then his capital is 1.5e10 / 365 = 4.1e7, or 41 million (a reasonable lower limit). Thus, he may have made as much as a 132% return in a year, which is quite good. As noted, however, the stock market is booming right now, thanks in large part to quantitative easing (when the US Fed buys bonds en masse, it forces investors into higher risk assets). Speculators are making a killing right now. That doesn't mean they will continue to do so.
4. Re: Lousy return by angel'o'sphere · 2014-09-28 08:48 · Score: 1
  
  As far as I understood it, he is doing that for more than a decade.
  So 15000 trades goes down to 1500 per year which means roughly 5 per day.
  Ha! Math makes live so easy!
  
  --
  Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
5. Re: Lousy return by khallow · 2014-09-28 10:08 · Score: 1
  
  More like 10 per day. Banker holidays.
Nothing special in Stock market by QuantumReality · 2014-09-28 07:29 · Score: 1

If you think that stock brokers and big wall street companies have something you don't have then you are wrong. There is no magic in it, there is no hidden, secret formula. It's about watching news and reading quarterly financial reports of companies. If company made a lot more in that quarter then EVERYONE knows that the stock will go up.. so everyone buys making the stock go higher... Anyway this is for average Joe.. 97% of profits from stock market in big companies from wall street are from high frequency trading.
1. Re:Nothing special in Stock market by kruach+aum · 2014-09-28 07:34 · Score: 1
  
  http://lmgtfy.com/?q=high+freq...
2. Re:Nothing special in Stock market by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 07:47 · Score: 0
  
  got a source for that 97% assertion?
3. Re:Nothing special in Stock market by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-29 03:23 · Score: 0
  
  got a source for that 97% assertion?
  Indeed, it's almost certainly wrong. HFT accounts for about 50% of trades, and as the game is making small amounts of money very quickly (the average profit per trade is about 0.05c per share, with total daily volume in the US being about 1.6 billion shares == less than $1M per day total for all HFT traders... these figures are from 2012, but the market was in decline at that point and AFAIK hasn't hugely increased since) it seems unlikely it scrapes more than single digit percentages of all profits.
Next year's headline by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 07:31 · Score: 0

Next year's headline: Mystery Gamer Loses Millions Moving Markets In Japan
PRODUCTIVE ECONOMY by Jeremiah+Cornelius · 2014-09-28 07:32 · Score: 2

Useful means of production and tangible assets of benefit, with intrinsic value.

--
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
halfway there by PopeRatzo · 2014-09-28 07:35 · Score: 1

I've got the playing video games and gambling all day part down. Looking forward to the billions pouring in.

--
You are welcome on my lawn.
Quotes are useful by wonkey_monkey · 2014-09-28 07:54 · Score: 2

whose name means death
That would sound a lot less sinister if you'd put quotes around the word "death."

control-A to guzzle a healing potion or shift-S to draw a sword, for example — and he could dance between them without taking his eyes off the screen.
He can hit Ctrl-A and Shift-S without looking? The man's a wizard!

--
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Risk of ruin by mc6809e · 2014-09-28 08:06 · Score: 1

He seems to have intuited this.
A direct quote from Warren Buffett by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 08:18 · Score: 0

"Sell the losers and let the winners run." It's not complex.
1. Buy companies that have a history of earnings growth.
2. Make sure your trailing stop loss orders are up to date.
3. Sell any stock that is down x% (10, 15, 20, whatever). You can always buy it back later at a lower price. ...
4. Profit.
Buffet doesn't use price targets but a even safer strategy is the above plus selling the winners after they have increased some predetermined amount.
1. Re:A direct quote from Warren Buffett by WaterDamage · 2014-09-28 08:50 · Score: 1
  
  ummmm, I really hate it when anyone makes stupid generalizations without explaining anything. Te whole point of trading, finding winners. How do you know you have a winner or just bought a falling knife? BTW, Buffet does use price targets almost every-time. As a matter of fact Buffet has been known to wait 15 years to buy a stock at the right price just to ensure he's not overpaying. Obviously you've never studied how he buys stock so you're just spewing complete garbage.
Survivorship Bias by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 08:38 · Score: 0

You're just reading about this one guy. Left out of the story is the much larger number of Japanese men who holed up in their rooms playing games and didn't get rich. The lottery, vegas, NFL/NBA hope, etc. They all motivate people the same way. Big news stories about the few big winners. No stories about the vast multitude of losers, who are probably you. If this is going to happen to you, it's going to happen to you. Talent is required, but so is luck. They work together. Talent is the ticket to ride; but the driver might still drop you off in the slums. Sucks, but that's how it is.
1. Re:Survivorship Bias by ledow · 2014-09-28 09:05 · Score: 1
  
  More directly, any sort of winning on a "bet" you make has to come from somewhere. Some guy loses out, or some stock exchange gives you money that it's inevitably getting from someone else as they lose.
  Gambling, or trading, overall, is not a zero-sum game. Your earnings have come from someone else's loss - PLUS commission. The guys earning commission are raking it in with little or no loss. But the guys the other end - they are the ones "giving" you that money, one way or another. Maybe via third-parties, maybe from their own companies, maybe from their own mistakes, maybe just in allowing the stock exchange to balance out and be profitable to operate while you're winning on the other, but the money has come from somewhere. It didn't magic out of thin air.
  Vegas and lotteries are the same. Yeah, you might win a million. The million came from some other MORE THAN ONE MILLION poor saps each spending one (of whatever currency) trying to win the million. And nothing is guaranteed. If you have a brain you stop once you've won big. To keep going is not only a sign of greed, but a sign of some stupidity. Before long, the tide will turn and if you're stupid you'll spend whatever you have left hoping that the next hand will fall your way.
  So you only ever hear of people winning big - and then never hearing of them again, or winning big and then stopping playing. The "I pissed away millions" story just makes people think you're a stupid fucker, so it's not that those stories don't exist or aren't heard, it's that nobody has any sympathy for *that* guy.
  Similarly for all those celebs who were earning millions and then have to declare themselves bankrupt. It's news both ends. But if you're wanting to make it big, you won't care about the second story because "you're not that stupid".
Isn't random 50%? by khasim · 2014-09-28 08:43 · Score: 1

So he can hit 6 out of 10.
Wouldn't random chance give him 5 out of 10?
And that's not even factoring in whether his comments are correct. And most people do NOT give accurate reports of their own winning/losing patterns.
And his self-reported "strategy" is to buy what other people are buying and to sell when they sell.
So who is selling when he is buying? Wouldn't he constantly be behind the curve? Paying too much for the stock and selling for too little?
1. Re:Isn't random 50%? by alexander_686 · 2014-09-28 10:07 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  So who is selling when he is buying? Wouldn't he constantly be behind the curve? Paying too much for the stock and selling for too little?
  You are touching on one of the great debates. Momentum trading is one of those anomalies that should not work in theory but does in practice. Why? Ideas have been kicked around for the last 20 years. Here is a link to a possible explanation.
  http://www.economist.com/news/...
2. Re:Isn't random 50%? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 18:34 · Score: 0
  
  Wouldn't he constantly be behind the curve? Paying too much for the stock and selling for too little?
  That only means that he doesn't make as much profit as he could do. As long as there is someone out there who is a bit further behind the curve he can make a profit.
3. Re:Isn't random 50%? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-29 03:15 · Score: 0
  
  So he can hit 6 out of 10.
  Wouldn't random chance give him 5 out of 10?
  No. From a day trader's perspective, a very large number of stocks don't move outside of the bid/ask spread within a reasonable time frame, so those can be counted as losses too. I'd guess about 4/10 would be about the expect success ratio for a day trader placing entirely random trades.
  
  And his self-reported "strategy" is to buy what other people are buying and to sell when they sell.
  One of the most successful simple strategies is "swing trading", and that's basically what this comes down to in the end: wait for people to start buying a stock and buy it, holding until people start selling en masse.
  
  So who is selling when he is buying?
  Rule no 1 of the stock market: there's always a moron who's doing the wrong thing. It wouldn't work otherwise.
  
  Wouldn't he constantly be behind the curve?
  Yes. If he could actually predict the future, he'd be able to make about 10% more profit on each trade. As well as getting rid of those 40% losses, of course.
  
  Paying too much for the stock and selling for too little?
  As long as he sells for more than he paid, he doesn't mind. The rest is loss aversion, a conceptual bias most of us have but which the greatest stock market traders seem to completely lack.
Is CIS authentic Japanese name? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2014-09-28 08:49 · Score: 1

All the Japanese proper nouns end in a vowel or "n". Right?

--
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
1. Re:Is CIS authentic Japanese name? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 09:58 · Score: 0
  
  All Japanese words do, not just proper nouns.
2. Re:Is CIS authentic Japanese name? by tomhath · 2014-09-28 10:32 · Score: 1
  
  They're also in Japanese, not English.
3. Re:Is CIS authentic Japanese name? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 10:47 · Score: 0
  
  C isn't typically used in transliterating Japanese, either - it's always S or K.
4. Re:Is CIS authentic Japanese name? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 17:48 · Score: 0
  
  CIS -> pronounced "shisu" in Japanese
  "shi su" -> (archaic) to die
  It's also a homophone with a word that can mean 'to finance'.
5. Re:Is CIS authentic Japanese name? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 17:52 · Score: 0
  
  its' probably overly poorly romanized of the romanization zisyo / dictionary, the living nerd.
  but who am i to know, I can't find it in katakana hiragana or kanji referenced anywhere.
Ultima Online by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 10:02 · Score: 0

I'm not surprised. Real world is nothing compared to what we lived through in that game.
And don't get me started on those pussy MMOs today.
His Explanation is Uninformative by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 14:56 · Score: 0

"That's how he now plays the stock market. CIS says he bets wrong four out of 10 times. The trick is to sell the losers fast while letting the winners ride. "Self-control is so important. You have to conserve your assets. That's what insulates you from the downturns and gives you the ammunition to make money." "
He is either profiting from a stock market phenomena he doesn't fully understand or he isn't tell us a lot about his strategy.
Definitely the Bitcoin creator by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-28 17:18 · Score: 0

He is obviously laundering his Bitcoins using day trades.
-lh
This lesson is from the game of go by wad4ever · 2014-09-29 04:25 · Score: 1

If you play the go (the Asian boardgame), you quickly learn how important it is to "cut and run". The critical skill is to identify, as soon as possible, whether or not something is going to work out. And if not, IMMEDIATELY stop investing resources into that venture, and shift to something that has potential.

--
--- wad