The Trader Who Made $34 Million In 24 Little Hours

His winning trade began on 12 August when he noted an unusual move in the equity markets …

24 August 2015 is one of those dates that will go down in trading history along with 19 October 1987 and 24 October 1929, so much so that it earned its own moniker – Black Monday and hashtag #blackmonday. In just 24 hours, one trillion dollars was wiped from global exchanges in a vicious wave that began in China and ended in New York.

While thousands of professional traders stood transfixed, unsure which way to turn, one self-taught Japanese trader coolly made $34 million by shorting the Nikkei 225. Known as CIS, he told his story live in a blow-by-blow account to his 40,000 followers on Twitter. This week he sat down with Bloomberg and revealed some of his method.

Back in Mid-August he starting shorting futures on the Nikkei 225 Stock Average with the expectation that it would drop. And when Black Monday came along on the 24th, drop it did indeed. By the close of the Asian session he’s amassed a profit of $13 million but instead of cashing out, he added to the position. His rationale was that when the US market opened New York would be in a panic, bringing down their markets which in turn would put further pressure on the Asian markets. That rationale saw him double his profit. But again, he didn’t walk away from the markets and took a punt that it had reached bottom and traded the rebound by going long. Again his prediction proved correct so that by Tuesday, when he finally closed out of the markets, he’d tripled his profit.

His final tweet says it all,

“That’s the end of my epic rebound trade”

An enigmatic man

Trading the rebound is not new to CIS, a 36 year old video game champion and gambler. 10 years ago he started Day Trading and made billions of yen from his bedroom and becoming a cult figure amongst Japanese Day Traders. With his swaggering comments and online bragging (showing statements for proof), this multimillionaire and father of three is actually highly protective of his identity.