The best trader of the world

The best trader of the world

In an interview with Bloomberg, this Japanese trader who has managed to amass a fortune of more than 140 million dollars in less than a decade operating in the stock markets, recounted the secret of his success.

CIS skipped classes in high school to play pachinko, a hybrid between slot machines and pin ball. He discovered that he had a special talent for winning games. At age 15, he says, he could earn 400,000 yen per month. One of his secrets was to identify the machines most likely to give larger payouts. Another was being able to endure 13 hours straight in the pachinko rooms, full of smoke and with a deafening noise, playing thousands of consecutive games to take advantage of the odds.

Once he finished his mechanical engineering degree, and after having dedicated most of the University to playing role-playing games, he locked himself in his room spending whole days roaming a virtual universe, storing weapons, treasures and food.

Having keyboard skills was a necessity. More than 100 key combinations were memorized for different functions in the game. “The game gave me a very valuable lesson: when to cut and when to let run, I was a pretty sure player, but just like in the real world.”

This is the same way you bet on the stock market. CIS says he is betting the wrong way four times out of ten. The trick is to sell the losing bets as quickly as possible, and let the winners run. For him a well-placed stop loss is the most beautiful operation there is.

There is a basic principle in my operation, “buy shares that are being bought, and sell shares that are being sold”.
This is deeper than it seems, according to Hersh Shefrin, professor of behavioral finance at Santa

Clara University in California and author of “Beyond Greed and Fear”; a 2007 book on the role of psychology in investment. Shefrin points out that what is called “the player’s fallacy” comes into play. At a craps table, for example, players tend to shift their bets to the numbers that have not come out, even though the odds do not change with each roll of dice. In the same way, even the most intelligent investor has an innate tendency to buy when stocks fall, and sell when they rise. “If you can get out of that mentality and bet against the crowd that acts by instinct, then you will have the opportunity to make money,” says Shefrin.