Through this article we would like to brin into your attention a legend among the Japanese day-traders, a 40-year old man who , according to his statements, amassed a fortune that exceeds ¥16 billion only by trading. His real name is unkown and he has yet to let anyone watch him work. He is known in the trading circles in Japan as CIS and he never offered a complete accound of his investing returns. Some traders say his claims cannot be verified even though he made public a number of statements from his many brokerage accounts along with his 2013 tax return that showed liquid assets with a value spanning from ¥4.4 billion to ¥4.8 billion. Nonetheless, his claims proven or not, CIS is a real person with a real family and a passion that inspires other traders to keep up their work in one of the most aggresive markets in the world.
In 2014, he claimed in an interview for Japantimes that on his busiest day he bought and sold stocks worth ¥70 billion. When asked about his whereabout, he claims his background is gambling and videogames from which he learned to stay calm and think fast on top of the importance of devising a plan and sticking to it as to make the odds act in his favour.
What is interesting about CIS is not his trading style or his weird habits, but his ability to stick all day to the screens and track the abnormalities in the markets, pouncing on them at the earliest possible time. He first came in the spotlight of the japanese trading community when, on December 8, 2005, Mizuho Securities Co. made costly mistake, selling 610,000 shared for ¥1 each instead of 1 share for ¥610,000. CIS noticed the error and bought 3300 shares and instead of relaxing, he got on securing his victory by shifting his wins in Nintendo Co. . But he did not stop here, he knew that someone screwed up and the financial shares will be punished for it and so, he decided to short the brokerages. When the dust has settled, he was ¥600 million richer according to his claims
Many speculations have been made regarding CIS’s trading strategy, even by correlating the timestamp of his twitter posts to events in the market. When asked how he does it, CIS’s response was “Buy stocks that are being bought, and sell stocks that are being sold.”. Even if this sounds pretty simple, behavioral psychologists claim that that human mind is hard-wired to bet on reversals, a phenomenon called “the gamblers fallacy”. This phenomenon takes advantage of the inability of the human mind to grasp statistics and, for example, at a game of roulette, the player tend to bet on the numbers that did not show up in a while, even if the odds do not change with each roll of the dice. Same thing applies to traders who trade against the trend and bet on reversals. Sure, this might bring in some profits but more often than not, trading against the market leads to imminent disaster. The phenomenon of “gambler’s fallacy” added with the instinctual fear of the crowd lead to a phenomenon recognized by the name of “fakeout” in the market.
Even if CIS is a rather controversial figure, there surely are a few thing worth noting in his activity that should be integrated in any trader’s psychology. Firstly, CIS’s fortune does not consist only in liquid assets, but also in owning 2 office buildings in Japan. He uses a strict money management and, on top of that, trades for the sake of trading, for the pleasure of it. His only task is to become a better trader and the profit follows, not the other way around. The emergence of CIS shows us that even if trading in the financial markets is an activity full of risk, it still is one of the only domains of activity that is able to create millionaires in a span of few years.
We hope this article might inspire you to become a better trader and remember to stay green!
MONTHLY YIELD | ||
---|---|---|
January 2025 | ||
Procent + | Procent - | Total |
17.26 | 6.00 | 11.26 |
December 2024 | ||
Procent + | Procent - | Total |
28.69 | 3.54 | 25.15 |
November 2024 | ||
Procent + | Procent - | Total |
30.78 | 1.25 | 29.53 |
TOTAL | 65.94 |