Raw Japan

Kimono trader sees no easy money

Japan’s best known retail currency trader, a housewife who made 800 million yen ($9 million) on the dollar, euro and pound, warns there is no such thing as easy money and investors must work hard and educate themselves not to get caught out in the volatile market we see these days.

Nicknamed the “kimono” trader by foreign and Japanese media, 61-year-old Yukiko Ikebe says many retail traders in FX margin trading lost big money late last year when Lehman Brothers collapsed and the yen soared broadly on safety bids.

The financial damage was severe for those who had a lot of money to spend and they now come to Ikebe’s lecture tours on FX trading to learn how to cope with tsunami in the foreign exchange markets and to find ways to recover their huge losses, she says.

“Those who had managed to survive the yen’s advance in August 2007 and March 2008 by paying margins to avoid automatic closure of the positions were all crushed with yen’s big jump in October last year,” Ikebe told me. “That became a wake-up call for everyone.”