First of all, I believe only a limited number of people will find this writing helpful; those are expats living in Japan, settling in there and trying to start stock investment who are capable of understanding written Japanese to some degree.
My motivation of writing this article is that I know how high the hurdle is to do investment in a foreign country as I am also a Japanese citizen living in Malaysia. A lot of information is available only in the local language and albeit the general similarity, the structure and relationship between the bank and stock market differs. For example, In Japan, to start trading, what you have to do is to open a security/trading account and you can straight away start bidding money. In Malaysia, you have to open two accounts; trading account and Central Depository System (CDS) account. So if you live in Japan, the steps you need to take are much simpler than those in Malaysia, whilst you gotta face this old-school manual documentation to open a trading account and go through overwhelming amount of information scattered in Japanese websites.
The image below shows one of the Japanese websites summarizing all the stock-related info. You already know how messed-up the UI/UX is… Welcome to Japan!
Without further do, let me explain the steps you need to go through from opening a trading account to buying stocks, and actually selling them.
Step1. Open a trading/security account
I recommend two brokerage firms providing a trading account: SBI Shoken (SBI証券) and Rakuten Shoken(楽天証券). They officially mention that even if you are a foreigner, if you have the proof of your residence known as Zairyu Card in Japan, you can open their account.
SBI talks about opening an account for foreigners: https://faq.sbisec.co.jp/faq_detail.html?id=28088).
Rakuten talks about opening an account for foreigners: https://www.rakuten-sec.co.jp/web/info/info20120706-04.html
Please go access their website and press 口座開設(kozakaisetsu) to initiate the opening of your account.
Step2. Put money into the trading account
The opened trading account will be linked with one of the local bank accounts you already have upon your registration; you can transfer money to the trading account from your normal bank account. Rakuten coined a term “Sweeping” for their online money transaction. By the way, if you are going to use the trading account of Rakuten Shoken, they also have their own online bank called Rakuten Bank (Don’t mix up here… Rakuten Shoken and Rakuten Bank are technically different companies but belong to the same Rakuten group). You would get some advantage by linking them for earning their group benefits.
Upon your registration, go to 入金(Nyukin) and start sweeping money in Rakuten on the page below:
Step3. Start buying a stock
Assuming you are very new to stock investment, I will cover only the minimum of what you have to know using the screenshot of Rakuten Shoken’s mobile app called iSpeed that you will be asked to install on your mobile right after you open their trading account.
To buy a stock, just click “現物買い” translated as “purchase the actual stock”:
Then, select the stocks you want to buy. Please note that the minimum number of stocks you can buy or sell per transaction is up to each company, but by and large,100 units is the standard. That means, if you want to buy a stock whose price per unit is 2000 yen, you have to have at least 200,000 yen in your trading account.
Then fill the required fields as below:
数量(Quantity): Set how many stocks you want to buy
価格(Price): Select 指値(Sashine) or 成行(Nariyuki). If you select Sashine, you can set the price for which you want to buy the stock. However, if the price does not go down to the price you set during the operation hours of the stock market, the deal will not happen and the order will fail. If you select Nariyuki, you will be able to purchase the stock immediately although the price upon the deal may not be as you expected.
Scrolling down, make sure you 取引暗証番号(4-digit password) provided when you open the trading account.
Now, you should be able to proceed with 注文する (Order).
Step4. Sell the stocks you bought
Tracking the price of the stocks you bought, you will reach a point where you determine to sell the stocks. Then, the process is simple. Just press ”現物売り” (selling the actual stock) and set the preferable time and price. Once the stock price time and amount has met your request, the deal will be sealed.
Lastly but importantly, if you earn/lose some amount of money in stock investment, you have to report it in the 確定申告(annual earning declaration) which will decide on how much tax imposed on you. If the amount is small, the tax office would not notice, but it is not recommended to ignore this reporting process for your own sake.
