Not all advice is Toshi
The Japanese investor, looking for advice, will find plenty of consultants willing to offer it. Some are on a level with the Toshi Journal, a monthly specializing in stock exchange tips, which invited its readers to let it invest on their behalf.
By the time Toshi Journal went under, in 1984, it had deprived 10,000 savers of a total 350 billion ($1.8 billion). It left 800 successors, investment advisory companies, for the most part owned by individuals, and all completely unregulated.
They will be subject to regulation, under a proposed law drafted by the advisory council at the Ministry of Finance.
The law will also affect the big investment trusts, closely linked with the 12 major securities houses, and often used as the dumping ground of poorly managed stocks. Out of 92 such funds, only six outperformed the Nikkei Index of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The draft law stipulates that an investment advisory company has to clarify its affiliation with a specific securities house, and get the consent of the client before any deals which involve it.
The best protection of the Japanese investor may prove to be not laws but foreign competition.