Theo: Osaka wasn't trading company shares back then, was it?
Ada: It traded rice, which was the actual currency of feudal Japan. In seventeen thirty, the Tokugawa shogunate officially sanctioned the Dojima Rice Exchange, establishing the first formal futures market.
Theo: In the seventeen hundreds?
Ada: Regional lords, the daimyo, sold warehouse receipts called kome-kitte, while speculators traded forward contracts called choai-mai. The master of that floor was Homma Munehisa, born in Sakata in seventeen twenty-four.
Theo: The man they called -
Ada: - the God of Markets, or Dewa no Tengu. Folk songs in the streets sang, I can never be a Homma, but I would settle to be a daimyo.
Theo: That's quite a reputation.
Ada: Edo folklore claims he pulled off one hundred consecutive winning trades.
Theo: A hundred in a row?
Ada: Accounts differ. Dojima registers prove his staggering wealth, but they record no unbroken streak. In seventeen fifty-five, he wrote San-en Kinsen Hiroku, The Fountain of Gold: The Three Monkey Record of Money, insisting traders study mass psychology: when all are bearish, there is cause for prices to rise.