Japan Daytraders Panic as Favorite Tweeter Goes Quiet on BOJ Day
Japan Daytraders Panic as Favorite Tweeter Goes Quiet on BOJ Day
(Bloomberg) -- Daytraders in Japan were befuddled this morning as they found themselves without a key source of information ahead of the Bank of Japan’s policy decision when Twitter temporarily suspended the account of prominent anonymous tweeter Okasanman.
Though @okasanman tweets a handful of items an hour ranging from economic data, breaking news on local media outlets and the occasional dad joke, the last tweet was at 9:34 a.m. local time. Users were instead greeted by a warning saying the account is temporarily restricted while Twitter cited "unusual activity on the account," without giving details.
The account is famed for the speed of its market-moving tweets, and it took users less than an hour to realize the account had been restricted, with some users barely concealing panic.
The Okasanman account scavenges through a huge range of sources all day to find potentially market-moving news and has amassed a following of more than 220,000 users.
It’s deemed essential by those who don’t typically have access to financial data terminals due to the speed at which it tweets -- especially on BOJ day, when the Okasanman account consistently tweets the decision within seconds of its release.
To contact the reporter on this story: Lily Nonomiya in Tokyo at lnonomiya@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Junko Hayashi at juhayashi@bloomberg.net, Gearoid Reidy
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