BNF
In October 2000, a 3rd year university law student in Japan opened a brokerage account with 1.64 million Yen saved from part-time work. His is 22 years and failed his first university entrance exams.
He trades with his own money, meaning he does not use leverage and he trades stocks. The Japanese stock market is down during the time he opened his account.
By 2002, his account has grown to Y96,000,000 Yen. He joins an online trading community called 2Channel, under the profile name "BNF"
He rises to the top of the leaderboard on 2Channel and becomes celebrated as a good trader especially because of the size of his account.
BNF grows his account up to Y1,000,000,000 Yen over time and then he stops updating his 2Channel thread and goes silent. He is not one for the cameras/fame
However, fate will force him back into the limelight when a Mizuho securities employee listing the share price of a new company called JCOM makes a big error.
Instead of entering 1 share of JCOM for Y610,000; the employee enters 610,000 shares of JCOM for Y1. Meanwhile the company has only 14,500 shares in existence
People start buying and BNF buys 7,100 shares meaning he now owned 41% of a listed company
Mizuho securities is forced to buy back some shares and this drives the price upwards.
Mizuho securities suffers a loss of Y40,000,000 due to this error.
Remember that Mizuho securities sold more shares than JCOM even had so the clearing house had to cancel delivery of shares to those who bought during the IPO and said the settlement should be done in cash
Japanese law dictates that if you own more than 5% of a company you need to be known and since BNF owned 41% he had to come out publicly and fill a form so he became known, his real name was Takashi Kotegawa
He made a profit of Y2,350,000,000 from this trade
