KOBE--For Shigeru Fujimoto, an 88-year-old day trader who lives in this capital of Hyogo Prefecture, his "workday" starts at 2 a.m., when most of the population is fast asleep.

The octogenarian first stretches to loosen up before he makes coffee and switches on his three computer monitors.

On a recent day, Fujimoto was seen checking out the U.S. stock market and reading newspapers and documents on financial results.

He was using this information to forecast the overall direction of the Japanese market and narrowed down which stock issues he was going to trade in. 

“It’s going to be a bear market today,” he said.

When the Tokyo Stock Exchange opened at 9 a.m., alarms were heard sounding in succession to signal that deals had been closed for the stock issues for which Fujimoto had placed sell orders in anticipating a rise in stock prices.

The computer monitors were showing that each deal had yielded a profit in the six digits in yen (four digits in dollars).

“I am the busiest between 9 and 10 a.m.,” Fujimoto griped as he typed a keyboard with a single forefinger to place orders. Sometimes, however, he mistyped keys, and the letters for “Error” appeared on the screen.

“It would be terrible if I were to mix up buy and sell orders,” he said as he strained his eyes at a computer monitor and a keyboard. “Well, in fact, I end up doing that once in a while.”

GOAL IS BUFFETT, CAP IS FRAYED

Fujimoto jots down records of his transactions in a notebook at hand.

“You see, many a little makes a mickle,” he said.

The amount of the assets he has accumulated topped 2 billion yen ($12.6 million) this year for the first time and continues to set new records.

“I hope to add another digit to that,” Fujimoto said. “My goal is (prominent U.S. investor) Warren Buffett.”

He said that, even if he has a numerical target, he has no desire to live in luxury on his earnings. 

Fujimoto has no cellphone or car. The clothes he is wearing are slightly wrinkled.

He bought his favorite cap that cost several thousand yen some 15 years ago. He continues to wear the cap, which his wife has been mending where it has frayed.

There is no hiding his declining health.

Fujimoto would take walks to build up his body, but he had acute lower back pain early this year, and he now needs a walking stick just to help him go to the restroom.

He suffered his second cerebral infarction in February, and he can no longer jot down transactions in his notebook as fast as before.

He uses a magnifying glass when his eyes are too tired to see letters on a computer monitor clearly.

Still, Fujimoto accepts his physical decline as inevitable and maintains a positive attitude.

“I would be able to make more transactions if I were to learn shorthand so I can take notes faster,” he said. “My trading style continues to evolve even as I weaken. I am rating myself only at 75 points (on a scale of 100).”

TAKING CHANCE ON INSPIRATION

Fujimoto has lived his life by the philosophy that, "You should take a chance, even at the risk of a failure, when something makes you think, ‘This is it’, whatever your age.”

Fujimoto began investing as a 19-year-old high school graduate. A customer of a pet shop where he had started working initiated him into the practice.

He began operating mah-jongg parlors after he had a flash of inspiration saying, “This is it.”

The parlors prospered, and he sold the business for 65 million yen after it had grown large enough to have three outlets.

He capitalized on his nest egg to become a full-time investor in 1986. He rode the tide of Japan’s asset-inflated economic boom of the late 1980s and increased his assets at the time to 1 billion yen.

The economic “bubble,” however, burst. There was nothing he could do as his assets slid to 200 million yen.

He suffered an additional blow from the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995, which left the entranceway to his apartment crushed.

He fled the strong tremors with only the clothes on his back and walked barefoot on streets that were littered with glass shards. His heart drifted away from investments as he lived the life of an evacuee in an elementary school building.

FIRST COMPUTER EXPERIENCE AT 66

A turning point came when Fujimoto became acquainted with the world of online stock trading in 2002.

Previously, he could only place buy and sell orders by phone or over-the-counter trading. He was told, however, that a stock brokerage firm, long familiar to him, was starting to offer online trading services.

Fujimoto, who was 66 at the time, had never even touched a personal computer, but he was undaunted.

“This would be so convenient and the commissions are so low,” he thought at the time. “I have no choice but to try this out.”

Fujimoto took no time in going to an electric appliance shop to buy a personal computer, which he carried home in his arms. He learned usage of the computer from scratch, which has led him to this point.

“It’s no use just remaining cautious and thinking to yourself, ‘Oh, that looks fine,’” he said. “Zero times zero only makes zero. Your world is so small. There are so many things that you don’t know. Age doesn’t matter when you are making a new effort.”

His approach has, of course, sometimes led him to make wrong decisions and suffer failures.

“I have stumbled not just seven, but about 50 times,” Fujimoto said in referring to a Japanese idiom that goes, “stumble seven times but recover eight.”

He changes his mood when he suffers a big loss in stock trading.

“I am always cursing myself in the belief that I shouldn’t be blaming others,” Fujimoto said. “Brooding is no good, because doing so only leads you to miss the next opportunity.”

Fujimoto, however, asserted that stock trading is not for those hoping to make easy money.

“Once you have bought stocks, they are your friends, so you have to be watching over them all the time,” he said. “You have to look them up every day, study them and be siblings with them.”

And that’s easier said than done.

Fujimoto stays seated in front of his computers all day long, even when his lower back hurts, and reads and studies related documents. Whenever there is breaking news, he forecasts the reaction of other investors to that factor and tries to get the jump on them.

His experiences and thoughts are accumulated by the day, but he still gets it wrong from time to time. That represents the difficulty, and the appeal, of day trading, Fujimoto said.

An Asahi Shimbun reporter, who remained overwhelmed by Fujimoto’s vigor throughout the interview for this article, asked him a few questions at the end of the session.

Excerpts of the exchange follow:

***

Question: What does money mean to you?

Fujimoto: Money is never a nuisance, but I don’t crave it very much. It does, however, make you seriously pay attention to it.

I don’t believe in the remarks of analysts who say things like, “The stocks of this issue will rise,” on TV and in newspapers. They are, after all, just salaried workers who are saying things like that without spending their own money.

I have to muster up the courage, even now, when I dip into my own funds. When I lose in the game, I say to myself, “Damn me,” and study hard in remorse.

It’s such fun when the economy and stock prices have moved the way I expected. That’s why I cannot stop doing this.

Q: Are you thinking about retirement?

A: I will be retiring when I die.

I am rating my life at 75 points (on a scale of 100) now. I am keeping my mind calm and polishing my trading skills every day. I will go on pursuing the perfection of spirit, techniques and physical fitness, and my life may improve to 90 or 100 points. That will be around the time I am leaving this world (laughs).

O troubled souls, look at me. It’s never too late to begin something. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single mile. You should live your life without brooding!

***

Born in 1936 as the youngest of four siblings in a farming family in Hyogo Prefecture, Shigeru Fujimoto began investing at the age of 19. He is strong in technical analysis, which is about studying past trends in stock prices to forecast future movements. His hobby is mountain climbing and he finds solace in his pet parakeet.

Fujimoto published “Teachings of Shigeru-san, an 87-year-old active trader,” a Japanese-language book, from Diamond Inc. in 2023.