A parakeet on his head
Pi-chan kept him company through the trading day. The press photographed them together.
The story behind the name · Kobe, 2 a.m.
The trader, the parakeet, and one rule.
PiChan is named after a real bird: Pi-chan, the parakeet of Shigeru Fujimoto, a day trader from Kobe whom the press calls Japan's Warren Buffett. For years, Pi-chan sat on his head while he traded.
This page is a tribute based on public reporting. Mr Fujimoto has no connection with PiChan and has not endorsed it. Images on this page are illustrative.
Seventy years at the screen
He made a fortune, lost most of it, and kept a notebook.
The bird came first. The trading started with a customer buying canary seed.
- 1936Born in April in Hyogo Prefecture, the youngest of four children in a poor farming family.
- Age 19After high school he works at a pet shop near Motomachi station in Kobe. A brokerage executive who comes in to buy canary seed gets him talking about stocks, and he starts investing.
- LaterOpens his own pet shop, then mahjong parlours, which grow to three outlets.
- 1986Sells the parlours for ¥65 million and becomes a full-time investor.
- Late 1980sThe bubble lifts him to ¥1 billion. When it bursts, he falls to ¥200 million and steps back from the market for a while.
- 1995The Great Hanshin earthquake crushes the entrance to his apartment in Kobe.
- 2002At 66, having never touched a computer, he buys his first PC and returns to the market online.
- 2015Turns to day trading.
- 2023His book is published by Diamond in November. It sells more than 120,000 copies within months.
- Aug 2024On the day the Nikkei falls 4,451 points, he is down ¥260 million on paper. He keeps trading as normal and wins back ¥140 million the next day.
- 2024Profiled by Bloomberg at 88, with about ¥2 billion.
- 2026Turns 90 in April. Still trading every day, and says he will keep going for as long as he lives.
The habits
Discipline you could see from across the room.
Up at 2 a.m.
He wakes at 2 a.m. to check what the US market did overnight before Tokyo opens.
Every trade, by hand
After the close, he writes the day's trades into a paper notebook. Every one of them.
Three screens, 80 stocks
He tracks around 80 stocks across three monitors, reads momentum and earnings, and warns against relaxing because a chart looks calm.
In his words, paraphrased
He warns that greed never pays.
In his words, paraphrased
He says he has stumbled not seven times, as the Japanese proverb has it, but about fifty.
Paraphrased from interviews he has given; not his exact words.
See him and Pi-chan
The photos live with the people who took them.
We link to the original reporting rather than copy it. Each link opens the publisher's own page.
29 Sept 2024 · English
Profile of the 88-year-old Kobe trader the press calls Japan's Warren Buffett
Subscriber article
Oct 2024 · Japanese
At 88, on 68 years of investing and staying calm through the August 2024 crash
Free to read
2026 · Japanese
At 90, still day trading, and what he plans next
Free to read
What PiChan took from it
Every habit became a rule in the product.
He refused to relax because a chart looked calm.
No verdicts.
Findings, counts and explanations only.
He admitted how much he didn't know.
Unknown is an answer.
Every section carries its own confidence.
He woke at 2 a.m. to watch the other market.
The guard.
PiChan watches your positions overnight.
He checks what happened overnight before he trades.
Every number has a time.
Freshness is shown, never assumed.
He lost most of a fortune, stumbled many times, and rebuilt it.
The memory.
History is kept; every ending gets a post-mortem.
He warned against greed.
Measured, not moralised.
Profit waiting to be sold on you is a number.
Inside the product
PiChan reports. The Trader judges.
Inside PiChan, the owner appears only as the Old Trader: no name, no face. The parakeet learned one trick, to repeat exactly what it saw and nothing else. It cannot invent, so it cannot flatter.
The Trader is you now. PiChan sits on your shoulder.
From the Trader's notebook
- Never trust what you haven't seen.
- A calm chart is not a finding.
- Greed is a number. Measure it.
- Survivors keep notebooks.
A note on this page
This is an independent tribute based on public reporting. Mr Fujimoto and his publisher have no involvement with PiChan and have not endorsed it. We do not use his image, and we keep his name out of the product.
Sources
- Bloomberg, 29 Sept 2024
- Kobe Shimbun · Maidona News, Oct 2024
- Gendai, 2026