For investors in Japan, equality online, by Martin Fackler

… day trading has taken off in Japan, the world’s second-largest financial market after the United States. The number of accounts at Japan’s electronic brokerage firms reached 7.9 million last September, up from 296,941 in 1999, when the first such firm opened … Internet trading, which did not exist before 1999, accounted for almost 29 percent of equity trades in the six months that ended in September 2005.

I like the idea of televised day-trading competitions, but I’m afraid all the contestants would be prematurely balding, twitchy young guys — not exactly a telegenic group. The show could be called “The Unsavory Money Game.”

(I’ve never seen a stock chart on a Palm-sized screen, but it sounds cool.)