Japanese Housewives Sweat in Secret as Markets Reel - New York Times

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/business/worldbusiness/16house...

September 16, 2007

By MARTIN FACKLER

TOKYO, Sept. 15 Since the credit crisis started shaking the world financial markets this summer, many
professional traders have taken big losses. Another, less likely group of investors has, too: middle-class
Japanese homemakers who moonlight as amateur currency speculators.
Ms. Itoh is one of them. Ms. Itoh, a homemaker in the central city of Nagoya, did not want her full name
used because her husband still does not know. After cleaning the dinner dishes, she would spend her
evenings buying and selling British pounds and Australian dollars.
When the turmoil struck the currency markets last month, Ms. Itoh spent a sleepless week as market losses
wiped out her holdings. She lost nearly all her familys $100,000 in savings.
I wanted to add to our savings, but instead I got in over my head, Ms. Itoh, 36, said.
Tens of thousands of married Japanese women ventured into online currency trading in the last year and a
half, playing the markets between household chores or after tucking the children into bed. While the
overwhelmingly male world of traders and investors here mocked them as kimono-clad Mrs. Watanabes,
these women collectively emerged as a powerful force, using Japans vast wealth to sway prices and
confound economists.
Many bought and sold stakes worth into the millions of dollars through margin trading, a potentially
lucrative but risky form of trading that uses borrowed money.
Until the credit crisis, which began with troubles in the American mortgage market, the value of foreign
currencies traded online by private Japanese citizens, including women, averaged $9.1 billion a day
almost a fifth of all foreign exchange trading worldwide during trading hours in Tokyo, said Kazuhiro
Shirakura, an analyst at the Yano Research Institute in Tokyo.
Now Japans homemaker-traders may become yet another casualty of the shakeout hitting the debt, credit
and stock markets worldwide. If so, these married women could lose more than just an investment
opportunity. They could also lose the newfound economic freedom that drew many to currency trading in
the first place.
Most analysts estimate that Japanese online investors lost $2.5 billion trading currency last month. In fact,
the subprime-mortgage crisis was the first severe market downturn since online trading took off here.
Economists see the current tumult as the first real test of Japans homemaker-traders, and whether these
newcomers have the stomach to ride out markets in a time of volatility.
Mrs. Watanabe got burned this time, said Masafumi Yamamoto, currency economist at Nikko Citigroup in
Tokyo. The question now is whether she can make a comeback.
Indeed, online currency trading has become a phenomenon here, with a subculture of blogs, books and
investing clubs for Japans legions of housewife-traders. The appeal, many of these women say, lies partly in

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the potential that online trading offered at least some financial independence for wives who still wanted to
dutifully spend their days at home.
Some of the women used their own money, some used their husbands, and some used a combination of
both. But by trading, they challenged deeply held social prohibitions in Japan against money, which is often
seen here as dirty, especially when earned through market speculation.
There are strict taboos against money that isnt earned with sweat from the brow, said Mayumi Torii, a
41-year-old mother of one who said she earned $150,000 since she started margin trading in currencies
early last year.
Ms. Torii is one of Japans most famous housewife-traders. She has written a book on her investing
strategies and founded a support group for home traders, the FX Beauties Club, which now has 40
members. (FX is financial shorthand for foreign exchange.)
But until her book was released in July, she said, she was afraid to admit even to her friends that she was
trading, though her husband knew and approved. Now she is a regular guest on television programs.
Ms. Torii said she intended to keep trading, despite the recent market setbacks. She said it was her best
chance to stand on my own economically, a necessity she discovered after her first marriage ended in
divorce, and she and her son had to live off her meager savings. I never want to feel that vulnerable again,
said Ms. Torii, now remarried.
For other women, trading offered a more modest sort of independence, giving them a chance to build up
savings separate from their husbands accounts.
One reason Japans homemakers can move markets is that they hold the purse strings of the nations $12.5
trillion in household savings. For more than a decade, that money languished in banks here at low interest
rates. But as the rapid aging of Japans population has brought anxiety about the future, households are
starting to move more of it overseas in search of higher returns.
A tiny fraction of this has flowed into risky investments like online currency accounts. Most of these
accounts involve margin trading, in which investors place a cash deposit with a brokerage that allows them
to borrow up to 20 or even 100 times their holdings for trading.
The practice has been popular not only because it vastly raises the level of potential profits, but also because
it allowed wives to trade at home, said Hiroshi Takao, chief operating officer of TokyoForex, an online
trading firm.
The housewife-traders were so secretive that many market analysts did not realize how widespread the
trend had become until this summer, when the police arrested a Tokyo housewife accused of failing to pay
$1.1 million in taxes on her foreign exchange earnings.
While day trading of stocks has also taken off in Japan, the women say they prefer currencies because of the
relative simplicity: currencies might involve only a handful of nations, while trading stocks might mean
keeping an eye on hundreds of companies.
For a time, margin trading seemed like a surefire way to make money, as the yen moved only downward
against the dollar and other currencies. But last month, in the midst of the credit turmoil, the yen soared as
hedge funds and traders panicked.
Ms. Itoh recalled that she had wanted to cry as she watched the yen jump as much as 5 percent in value in a

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single day, Aug. 16.

But I had to keep a poker face, because my husband was sitting behind me, Ms. Itoh said.
She did not sell her position, thinking the yen would fall again. But by the next morning, only $1,000
remained in her account, she said.
Yayoi Kawakage, a 40-year-old homemaker who works part time at a real estate consulting firm, said she
limited her losses last month to $500 because she sold her positions quickly. She said that if markets
become less predictable now, many housewives would likely abandon trading.
The subprime problem showed good things dont last forever, she said.
Still, some analysts point out that the $2.5 billion that Japanese individuals lost last month was just a
fraction of a percent of the nations overall household savings.
It is about the same as what Japan spends in two weeks on horse racing, lotteries and pachinko, said
Tohru Sasaki, chief foreign exchange strategist at JPMorgan Chase Bank, referring to a pinball-like game
popular among gamblers here.
Mr. Sasaki said he believed the losses were not big enough to scare away married women and other
investors. And while the trading volume is far below last months, recent data show signs of a return to
online trading, said Mr. Yamamoto of Citigroup.
Indeed, most of the half dozen homemaker-traders interviewed for this article said they were already
trading again, and the rest said they soon would be including Ms. Itoh, who said she would probably
invest her remaining $1,000 in savings.
Theres no other way to make money so quickly, she said.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

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