>>The Japanese "Joe 6 pack" simply
does not seem to be as interested in the stock market and other finance stuff as we are here.
<<
QUite right. The US is afterall a tulip market... No seriously, there are a number of hurdles that make playing in the market here on a "small time" basis very difficult. There are numerous small investor unfriendly rules and until they are changed, it would be difficult to see large direct participation from the small investor.
For example, Japanese stocks are bought and sold in 1000 share lots.
You can get 100 shares of certain companies (actually 10 or even one in some very pricey issues like NTT for example) but you can only buy at the closing price and sell at the closing price.
So if you want to buy let say Oracle Japan and it is trading at 7000 yen, (say 60 USD ) THEN you must buy 1000 shares. That is serious money for the small time investor. If you want to buy 100 shares
your buy order will only be executed at the closing price that day. Same for kyocera. They call it mini kabu (mini shares) and to trade smaller amounts of shares you pay a very potentially big penalty. Mind you their market in nowhere near as volatile as the US but still not a very good deal.
Since the market crash a lot of companies have come crashing down to earth, so a 1000 shares of a lot of companies is not that much money anymore (1000 of Nippon Steel is now about 2.50 US or NEC 8 months ago was 800 yen (1 usd = 121 yen) but the int'l blue chips that have done ok in this environment are nevertheless quite pricey (5000 to 12,000 yen for most issues) so you can see that the tables are even more slanted towards the big guys, institutions over here.
Another example (in this case it may only be a one company rule), but I was sort of bragging two weeks ago that I had done well on a Bear Fund on the Nikkei 225. I bought it at Daiwa at 17,300 and within days the nikkei had gone down to 16,100. Well, when I wanted to get back in on the Bear side, they told me I had to wait two weeks. House rules. You can't buy the same product (although I could have bought in to the SP500 Bear they have) right away, apparently a rule to protect the customers from the brokers switching them too often in and out of the funds, hitting them with a commission each time... What is a guy to do ???
And on top of that , stack a 9 year bear market where the only way to have made money during this time interval would have been to be a VERY good market timer ... and you can see J6P is not keen on stocks...
Now that I am on the subject of bear markets, one things just came back to me, a conversation I was having a while back with my friend the business man... Everybody who was playing stocks and their mothers were in at the top of the bubble in 1990. after it burst nobody had anymoney to put in . After the business environment really turned sour in 97, the investors (the ones in his class anyway, the big enough ones to buy 1000 share lots at the height) were also getting hurt in their real going concerns and just had to dump or disappear ... His explanations make a lot of sense when you overlap them with the Nikkei 225. So still, even 9 years later, EVEN with money getting a pitiful .8% in a money market account here, that's a good deal compared to where you are if you stayed long all these years... USA 1940 anyone? (Don't know I wasn't born yet...) 1974? (Heck I can read a chart even if I was still a bit young...) So , bottom line is, not many have an appetite for stocks at this point I think, at least not the kind of numbers of J6Ps (although I don't like the term) to make a bulb...
One last (ok my posts are always too long...)
NTT DoCoMo (actual spelling, play on words in Japanese it sounds like AnyWhere, it's a cell phone company now independent from NTT) had its IPO a little while back ( a year, could it be?) and the shares went at about 3,700,000 yen per share (30,000 usd say) . Not your typical Naz stock. How many would you take?
Regards
sg |
