Waseda University's reputation was quite impressive. Recruit Cosmos, the company Takeshita Masato interviewed with in the afternoon, not only gave him the top bonus of 500,000 yen but also included a large stack of shopping vouchers.
Takeshita Masato counted them at home, and their face value was roughly 250,000 yen. He could only say that it was indeed a wealthy real estate company, each one more generous than the last.
He liked it very much.
"The principal is almost enough. Tomorrow is Monday, perfect for focusing on stock trading to make money from now on."
Takeshita Masato hadn't been in this world for long, less than 15 days. However, even so, including today, he had earned over 6 million yen through interviews.
Because he had been busy with interviews to earn money, he hadn't done any trading in the stock market. He had simply gone all-in with 5x leverage on blue-chip bank stocks like Dai-Ichi Kangyo and Chogin.
While this was stable, it wasn't possible to make big money with such a small principal.
Takeshita Masato planned to engage in full-time financial trading from Monday to Friday when the stock exchange was open. He would only conduct interview money-making activities on weekends when the market was closed.
However, to be on the safe side, he didn't choose the riskier foreign exchange market. Instead, he targeted the relatively stable stock market and the Nikkei 225, which is stock index futures trading, which carries a certain level of risk.
He planned to divide his funds into 3 parts, two of which would still be all-in on bank blue-chip stocks with 5x leverage.
With 5x leverage on stocks, a crash of 20% is needed for a margin call.
During the Bubble Era, the Tokyo stock market was in an unprecedented bull market. Let alone 20%, even a 10% drop was extremely rare.
The remaining one part would be used for the riskier Nikkei 225 index futures.
For the Nikkei 225, each point of fluctuation is worth 10,000 yen. What's more critical is that the Nikkei 225 settles every 5 points, meaning the minimum profit or loss per trade is 50,000 yen.
Sometimes, the profit or loss in a single minute could be hundreds of thousands of yen.
However, even so, for Takeshita Masato, a transmigrator, the risk of the Nikkei was far lower than the foreign exchange market.
Currently, the margin for one Nikkei contract is over 1.3 million yen, which means the index would need to plummet by over 130 points for Takeshita Masato to face a margin call.
And even if it did suddenly drop by over 130 points, he could temporarily clear his stock positions and add margin. He would only be liquidated if the Nikkei fell by over 400 points.
In his memory of the Japanese Bubble Era, the Nikkei index in the first half of 1986 never experienced such a sharp decline.
The foreign exchange market was different. To make money, using 100x leverage was common, meaning a 1% fluctuation would lead to a margin call. Even if he cleared his stock positions to add margin, a 3% drop would liquidate him.
Six months had passed since the Plaza Accord. Although the yen was generally appreciating, it was no longer like last year when simply buying yen guaranteed profit.
During the yen's appreciation, institutions frequently shorted the yen repeatedly to shake out the market.
Takeshita Masato wasn't as sensitive to the foreign exchange market and couldn't keep up with the institutions' pace, so he only considered the foreign exchange market right after transmigrating when his mind wasn't clear.
...
Although Tokyo's public safety was relatively good, keeping a large amount of cash at home was always a hidden danger. So, the next morning, Takeshita Masato went to Yamaichi Securities early with over 1 million yen in cash.
It was close to the apartment he rented and was the company where he opened his account 10 days ago.
"So many people! I didn't expect so many people to gather in the financial market even before the Bubble Era officially began."
As soon as he entered the trading hall, Takeshita Masato was shocked by the dense crowd inside.
It's worth noting that Yamaichi Securities was one of Japan's four major securities firms, and its trading hall in Tokyo was very large. However, even so, the hall was still packed with people at this time.
But he quickly calmed down, muttering softly, "But it's normal. The financial market is so profitable; it would be strange if there weren't many people."
After 1986, the Japanese financial market became increasingly prosperous.
This was due to both internal Japanese factors and the influence of the international situation.
On the Japanese side:
Firstly, Japan was still in its golden age of economic development in the 1980s, so most stock investors had good returns in the financial market, which in turn led to more capital flowing in.
Secondly, the Bank of Japan began to implement successive interest rate cuts.
When the central bank cut interest rates, keeping money in the bank became less attractive, so people withdrew their money and invested it in financial markets such as insurance, bonds, and stocks.
Furthermore, the central bank's interest rate cuts also led more companies and individuals to borrow money for stock trading.
As for international factors, the main influence came from the United States.
The United States experienced severe inflation in the 1980s, and both the real economy and the stock market became sluggish, making it difficult to earn money.
There was indeed nothing that could be done about the real economy; they simply couldn't compete with Japan.
It's worth noting that the United States had imposed three large-scale trade sanctions on Japan, from the earliest textile industry to later the steel and automobile industries, and even recently the electronics and semiconductor industries.
The results could not be said to be useful; they could only be described as getting worse each time.
With each trade sanction, the trade surplus between Japan and the US widened.
It could be said that the United States no longer held much hope for the results of trade sanctions.
The financial sector was different; this was Wall Street's specialty. No player in the world could beat Wall Street in this area.
Therefore, the giant capital firms on Wall Street continuously lobbied the US government to pressure Japan, thereby opening up the Japanese financial market and earning more money.
Japan quickly succumbed to the pressure and initiated financial liberalization reforms.
From then on, American capital, eager to make money, began flowing into the Japanese financial market in a continuous stream.
Besides the two major elements, domestic and international, the news media also acted as a catalyst for the expansion of the Japanese financial market.
Newspapers, television, and magazines constantly featured stories about someone earning 100 million from 200,000 through stock trading, or someone buying a house in Ginza, Tokyo, outright by trading foreign exchange.
The society was filled with talk of making big money through stock and foreign exchange trading.
Facing this temptation, many ordinary people who had only a superficial understanding of stock and foreign exchange trading couldn't help but take out their savings and enter the financial market, which became unprecedentedly prosperous.
"Dai-Ichi Kangyo, buy 10 lots."
"Nomura Securities, buy 20 lots."
"Toyota Motor, sell 15 lots."
...
Large numbers of citizens waved their stock certificates, constantly buying and selling.
Phone calls, shouts, and keyboard sounds rose and fell. It was somewhat like a vegetable market, or perhaps even more chaotic than a vegetable market.
However, this could only be considered a small scene at the moment.
After the Bank of Japan continues to cut interest rates in March and April of this year, there will be more hot money in the market, and more inexperienced novice users will follow suit and enter.
Japan thus entered the era of universal stock trading, the Bubble Era.