Recently, I was studying the legendary traders of the Japanese stock market and found a very interesting comparison.

One is the "God of Trading" Takashi Kotsukawa, and the other is known as the "Strongest Retail Investor" CIS. These two are not only friends but also have remarkably similar experiences—they both started trading in college, gradually growing their small funds into hundreds of millions of yen. Even more legendary is that they both made their names during the 2005 J-COM order misplacement incident, with CIS earning 600 million yen that day, and Takashi Kotsukawa even more aggressively, making 2 billion yen in just 10 minutes.

But what's interesting is that their trading philosophies are quite different. Takashi Kotsukawa’s early success mainly came from contrarian investing. When the internet bubble burst in 2000 and global stock markets plummeted, Japan was no exception, and most investors were panicking. But Takashi Kotsukawa saw opportunity—he identified severely undervalued stocks by observing the divergence of the 25-day moving average, specifically buying those with negative divergence, and profiting from rebounds. This required strong psychological resilience and patience in research.

By 2003, the market environment changed, and Takashi Kotsukawa’s strategy shifted as well. This transition was crucial; his assets skyrocketed from 100 million yen to 8 billion. After that, he switched to trend-following strategies, trading in line with market trends. His approach involved short-term trades lasting two days or less, holding 20-50 stocks simultaneously to diversify risk, and switching to new targets each morning. He was especially good at capturing industry linkages—if one of the big four steel companies rose, he would buy others that hadn’t yet risen, riding the entire sector’s wave.

CIS’s trend-following principle is simpler and more powerful—stocks that are rising continuously are likely to keep rising, and those falling will likely continue to fall. Most people see stock movements as a 50-50 probability game, but the market actually has strong continuity. The strong get stronger, the weak get weaker. Many fear chasing high and getting caught, waiting for a brief dip to buy, but in a strong bull market, they often miss the entire trend.

Both of them emphasize a core principle: don’t trade against the trend, and don’t add to losing positions. When a trade fails, the best move is to accept the loss and cut your losses, rather than doubling down. Truly good traders are often born during major market crashes and economic crises. When most are panicking, those who can stay calm and act decisively stand out.

Takashi Kotsukawa also warned about a very practical issue: don’t blindly trust past rules of thumb. The market is a dynamic system; once rules are widely disseminated, they tend to become ineffective. What’s needed are unique perspectives and sharp judgment.

Honestly, these ideas are especially applicable in today’s crypto markets. Recently, I’ve been watching some trading opportunities on Gate.io, and I feel that trend-following thinking works just as well here. Investment involves risks, so trade cautiously.