This Japanese trader calls himself BNF, short for Victor Niederhoffer (more obvious when pronounced in Japanese). He started in 1999 with savings of 1,600,000 yen (13,600 dollar*) earned at his part-time job and turned it into a whopping 16,5 billion yen (140 million dollar*) in 2007. Takeshi Kotegawa's style is mainly swing trading (although they call him a day trader) and from what I understood in other discussions, he is a bottom fisher. He buys oversold stuff to profit from a recovery to the mean in the coming three days. Lehman Brothers was one his bets in September 2008 with which he has lost 700 million yen (6 million dollar*) though. He prefers to take in light food, hence a daily cup noodle because he wants to keep lunchtime short and feel prepared for the midday 12:30 pm session. On that particular day, he had a turnover of 10 billion yen (85 million dollar*) and a profit of 30 million yen (255,000 dollar*). What does he use his money for? He does not feel a need to spend money but prefers to watch TV and play video games. Recently he bought two Wii's which were the largest recent expenditures. He paid for his own apartment in cash and bought his parents a new car. But he does not like to look at his savings because he believes it distracts him from his trading. In October 2008 he bought an entire office building in the center of Akihabara for 9 billion yen (77 million dollar*). The reason? He had too much cash and wanted to diversify because the growth with stock trading has slowed down. End of 2008 his net worth was estimated to be 21,8 billion yen (185 million dollar*). * Assuming 100 yen are currently worth 0.85 dollar. See for yourself (it's Japanese): Code: <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/6LLtlY16Ry4?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/6LLtlY16Ry4?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>
1) Do you live in Palatine, Illinois? 2) The biggest "secret" is merely to have talent, aptitude and discipline for the task. To live within one's means can go a long way in holding onto the hard won profits.
Agreed, nazzdack. I don't live in Palatine. It's referring to this definition which might not correlate to your second point, though ... I just like big words I'm wondering how he is doing. There are no more recent videos of him. From what I could depict in the videos available, he is extreme introvert, very thrifty, did not have a girlfriend (although hopes to have), has never been abroad thus doesn't travel, and shops at 100 yen (one-dollar) stores. He did have an outburst when he was talking about this Lehman bet on a radio show, whereby he admitted to have smashed an LCD screen. When beginning to trade he lightheartedly said that he didn't mind to lose. Altogether he seems to be a calm chap and never even brags about his performance when presenting the astonishing account statements. He became instantly famous with this J-COM incident discussed in the first part of the video. A banker wanted to sell 1 J-COM share for 61,000 yen but accidentally placed an order to sell 61,000 shares at 1 yen. BNF saw this discrepancy and bought into it, earning roughly 2 billion yen (17 million dollar) in 16 minutes time. While most of the profiteers gave back the money he refused to.