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Jason Clenfield writes in Businessweek that tax returns show that a former video game champion and pachinko gambler who goes by the name CIS traded 1.7 trillion yen ($15 Billion) worth of Japanese equities in 2013 -- about half of 1 percent of the value of all the share transactions done by individuals on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The 35-year-old day trader whose name means death in classical Japanese says he made 6 billion yen ($54 Million), after taxes, betting on Japanese stocks last year. The nickname is a holdover from his gaming days, when he used to crush foes in virtual wrestling rings and online fantasy worlds.
“Games taught me to think fast and stay calm." CIS says he barely got his degree in mechanical engineering, having devoted most of college to the fantasy role-playing game Ultima Online. Holed up in his bedroom, he spent days on end roaming the game’s virtual universe, stockpiling weapons, treasure and food. He calls this an early exercise in building and protecting assets. Wicked keyboard skills were a must. He memorized more than 100 key-stroke shortcuts -- control-A to guzzle a healing potion or shift-S to draw a sword, for example -- and he could dance between them without taking his eyes off the screen. “Some people can do it, some can’t,” he says with a shrug. But the game taught a bigger lesson: when to cut and run. “I was a pretty confident player, but just like in the real world, the more opponents you have, the worse your chances are,” he says. “You lose nothing by running.” That’s how he now plays the stock market. CIS says he bets wrong four out of 10 times. The trick is to sell the losers fast while letting the winners ride. “Self-control is so important. You have to conserve your assets. That’s what insulates you from the downturns and gives you the ammunition to make money.”
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday September 30 2014, @12:14PM
Having played UO on a private server and EVE about a decade ago I guarantee he was wasting his time on UO (although he was on UO a decade before EVE was "cool").
I played EVE for about a month until I got really bored and one of my money making schemes was I was apparently the only guy doing time arbitrage so every freaking night when the USA EUR JA people, or at least the small time noobs, went to bed after an evening of gaming, they'd dump all their ground up asteroids on the market all at once crashing prices. Meanwhile I got awesome high sell prices when these guys weren't dumping. I had all these diagrams and stuff. Overlapping sleep cycles were a problem.
The hard part wasn't so much making money but making the most money as an optimization game. I'd make "the most money" on a single trade if I bought ground up asteroid at 4am and sold at 5pm every day. But thats only one trade on my capital investment... not a good idea. I made more by buying at 4am selling at 10am buying at 3 pm selling at 4pm or it was something like that. I had spreadsheets and stuff.
It got real boring after a month or so. Also EVE is hyper-classist or pyramid shaped or whatever so noobs only make 1/100000th the amount old timers made and its very easy to make 50% profit off trading pennies with noobs but I found it difficult and stressful to profit at all when trading $100 bills in 0.0 space with old timers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 30 2014, @04:55PM
Having played UO on a private server and EVE about a decade ago
I found it difficult and stressful to profit at all when trading $100 bills in 0.0 space with old timers.
OK, the game is just over a decade old. About a decade ago was 2005. At that time, there was no 100sB ISK around floating in trades (not $$). Even today, 100B ISK is not a trivial sum. There is very little trade done at this level - only things like Titans (largest ships) cost close to that much.
So sorry, I'd call bullshit on your bad recollection of events and amounts.
As for 50% profit on small items, sure, but you only have so much time in the day to click on orders. 306 per character with max trade skills, if I recall correctly. And if you spend about 10 seconds per order, that is an hour of your time.