Japanese Wives Sweat in Secret as Markets Reel
By MARTIN FACKLER
New York Times
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, much of it through margin trading, a potentially lucrative but risky method that uses borrowed money.
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 family’s $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 new force, using Japan’s 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.
(Continued here.)
New York Times
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, much of it through margin trading, a potentially lucrative but risky method that uses borrowed money.
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 family’s $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 new force, using Japan’s 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.
(Continued here.)
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