January 20, 2006
How Cell Phones Roil Japan's Stocks
In a must-read article in Business Week, journalists Kenji Hall and Ian Rowley describe how the accelaration of the Japanese market plunge on January 18 can be attributed to cell phones.
... "As the benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average nosedived this week, plenty of ordinary Japanese investors were shedding shares as fast as the professional brokerage traders. ... Many of those tech-savvy investors in their 30s and 40s were placing sell orders with the flick of a button on a clamshell cell phone with a speedy wireless connection.
... In November, the value of trades made via mobile phones by three of Japan's major online brokers hit 1 trillion yen ($8.7 billion) for the first time, a rise of 90% over the year before.
... In terms of trading volumes, a BusinessWeek survey of Japan's top five Net brokerages -- Monex Beans, Rakuten Securities, Matsui Securities, E*Trade, and Kabu.com -- suggests that orders for at least a tenth of the money traded by online brokers come by cell phone. That's double the proportion from a couple of years ago."
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