BNF — The Most Profitable Lone Trader of Japan | Documentary

In a rented room in Chiba, a university student opens a brokerage account with 1.6 million yen, about $13,000, saved [music] from a part-time job. Over the next 5 years, he turns it into billions, trading a loan, telling [music] nobody, under three letters on a message board that belong to no one. Then on a December morning in 2005, a

stranger at a bank makes a typing error and the man in the room makes 2 billion yen before lunch. The bank loses 40 billion. The head of the Tokyo Stock Exchange resigns within a fortnight. The man in the room is 27 years old and has no [music] job. >> Nobody in Japan had ever seen an

individual do that to an institution. Nobody. >> He wasn't a fund manager. He wasn't anybody. That was the part people couldn't get [music] past. >> And the moment he won, he had a legal problem. In Japan, winning that big means your name goes on a public form. [music] >> He is not found out by a reporter or a

rival or a regulator. He is found out by a form he is required by law to sign. His name is Tekashi Kotagawa.

On the 24th of November 1997, the president of Yamichi Securities, one of the four largest stock brokers in Japan, [music] announces that his firm is closing after a 100red years. >> Yamichi Securities, which held a prominent place among major institutions, has effectively gone [music] bankrupt, bringing its 100year history to a close. >> Shi Noa breaks down. He tells the room

the fault is with management not with the employees [music] and asks the country to give his people work. >> One thing I want to say we the executives are the ones who are to blame and our employees have done nothing wrong. >> A week earlier Hokkaido Takushoku Bank had failed. The first major Japanese