Does anyone actively DAYtrade the Japan market? My research indicates that due to some local rule, all local brokers (matsui, SBI, kabu, nikko etc) can only accept residents as customers. I see that IB and Saxo have access to Japan stocks, but their commission rates are too high for daytrading. Commission-wise I find only the local brokers (like matsui) are doable for flipping stocks, but again non-local residents can't open with them. So how can anyone daytrade Japan (stocks)?
Yeah, that's a problem for those of you outside Japan. Too bad as you could day trade here with zero commission. Have you considered day trading Nikkei futures on OSE with IB or AMP?
It's a super boring and uneventful market almost all the time. I have traded multiple asset classes while living and working in Japan for over 7 years. Options are dead. Nikkei and topix are dead. As is Japanese society. Completely ignorant and indifferent about politics and the future direction of he country. It's a follow the leader type of mentality culture and the leaders in power are middle aged beaurocrats who know shit about business, life, the world, and are too arrogant to ever want to look at other cultures and countries to potentially learn from. A very sinister look but pretty accurate reflection of the status quo in my opinion.
Sage. Arrogance+ignorance are rampant all over the world. You have one "crime boss" at the top that protects his obedient but incompetent minions and the boss gets too much fun out of taking a dump in the sand box. He doesn't care, its not his sandbox.
I have never actively day traded Japanese stocks, but I did live there for over a decade. I would recommend you NOT to day trade Japanese stocks. I must ask, why are you interested in day trading Japanese stocks? I don't see any reason why you would want to, but I suppose if you were really determined, there are ways of making it happen. In my opinion, day trading is pretty much day trading, and there is a much wider selection of stocks in the US. Here are the reasons why I don't recommend it. I've invested in Japanese stocks, and let me tell you, it would be a nightmare to day trade. I've used 2 brokerages there and their Depth of Market was HTML based, so you had to reload it every time you wanted to see the bid/ask levels, and I had to type in my orders, as opposed to clicking the level. I didn't care as I was investing, so I just hit the market order, but as an active day trader, that wouldn't be fun. Also, some other reasons why I wouldn't recommend it, is because the stocks are not nearly as liquid as they are in the US, so you'd be paying higher spreads. And not only that, but one of the stocks that I am currently holding is NEC ticker symbol 6701, which you can see on Google Finance. Here is what happened on Friday, and I'm simulating a day trading experience for this stock. So it opened at 280 and you hit the market order and it fills you at 281, and the stock goes up to 283 (Yaaay, you've made 2 yen so far). On 1000 shares, you made 2000 yen which is less than $20. Now lunch time in Japan rolls around at 11:30, and the stock market is closed for 1 hour and all trading is halted. 12:30, market re-opens, and the stock has gapped down to 281. Well now you're break even.. Ask is 282, bid is 281. You put your offer to try and close your position at 283 (the intraday high). From 12:30 to 3pm (which is when the Japanese stock market closes), it just hits the bids and asks for the rest of the day and bounces up from 281 to 282 for the next 2.5 hours, not once even touching 283... and even if it did, you probably wouldn't have gotten your order filled. Now it's 2:59 and you need to get out of your position, so you're forced to hit the market order since there are too many offers at 282, so you closed your position at break even. This is the reality of a lot of Japanese stocks.
You must not have been using the platforms that the brokers have been providing since 1998 where the DOM is updated in real time and orders are placed with 1 click on the DOM or chart. Your example using NEC is poor as it is a large capital stock that is sluggish and not appropriate for day trading. There are more than enough stocks to day trade here with sufficient volatility, liquidity, and the minimum spread of 1 yen. You might want to look into that more deeply.
I respect Zzzz1's opinion on this subject because he has actual real world international trading experience in many markets. That being said, why is everyone so negative on the potential of day trading Japanese stocks??? There must be some details that I am missing. A few years ago I spent a few days taking at look daytrading Japanese Stocks. One of the interesting things that happens is the daily break, "lunch break???". The market closes for one hour and then reopens. What I found is movements in the last few minutes of trading that were far from being normally distributed. The stock could go down violently before lunch break and then gap up high in the opposite direction, some would continue on in a negative fashion. I actually saw promising predictive results (better than coin flip) using a binary Markov Chain to analyze movements before and after the break. There seems to be violent burst of movement in some stocks then things go quiet for the rest of the day. http://stocks.finance.yahoo.co.jp/stocks/chart/?code=8783.T&ct=b Japanese stocks are clearly a different animal, I don't doubt what Zzzz1 is saying but is there any type of advantage to be had? Tape Reading? Momentum? Pairs Trading? ADR Plays for dual listed stocks (e.x. Toyota)? It would be nice to trade a market without constant HFTs picking people off...I would like to think a human could still do that in Japan
I can give you a very short answer to why I am so negative on the Japanese market: Japanese politicians and business leaders are incredibly arrogant and still have not hit the wall. They feel they innovate (very few nich markets are such as fanuc), they feel they innovate but they don't understand consumer needs anymore and instead create stuff and brainwash Japanese consumer of a need for stupid products. Look at Nintendo. It took them 2 decades to open up their game library to other platforms. Their hardware inventions over the past 10 years is ridiculous. Look at Sony. Look at Panasonic or Toshiba or Sharp. All completely misread the international and Japanese market and demand. The stock market in particular is riddled with short sell restrictions en Masse, small stocks are manipulated by the mafia, especially small property developers and pachinko stocks. Look at Glee, a company that is built entirely on gaming addiction and making users shell out hundreds if not thousands of dollars for in app purchases. Then commission cost to trade are sky high. Illiquid stocks en Masse. And transaction taxes. Need to list more?