The Japanese housewives who created a financial and cultural phenomenon in Japan, and this could literally spread throughout the world in Period 9.
We have witnessed the rise of financial influencers using their platforms to make investing more inclusive, thereby attracting a broader audience that may not have felt encouraged to engage with the industry previously.
This movement is typically associated with contemporary social media platforms. However, in the early 2000s, women continued to find alternative offline methods to encourage other women to enter the investing industry, even when it appeared inaccessible to them. Mrs. Watanabe’s trend is an unlikely but successful example of this on international markets.
Mrs. Watanabe (a common Japanese surname) is a collective term used to describe the Japanese housewives who created a financial and cultural phenomenon, as opposed to being an individual. In an effort to maximize their family savings in the face of low interest rates, these unlikely investment gurus rose to prominence in the early twenty-first century when they began engaging in currency trading. The women did this by purchasing yen at low rates and then exchanging it for a currency with high growth, typically Australian dollars.
As the yen continued to decline over the decades, Mrs. Watanabes in Japan began to engage in high-risk, high-reward trades, which had such an impact on the Japanese and global markets that they are credited with helping to stabilize the yen.
Summary
With the arrival of Period 9, will there be a rise in female financial market participants? They may be housewives, but they have the time, money, and aptitude to become traders.
In the next 20 years (in Period 9), I am confident that not only Japanese housewives but also housewives around the world will engage in some form of online financial market trading.
