Mrs. Watanabe

Mrs. Watanabe, also called Kimono Trader, is a term that became prominent in the early 2000s for a stereotype of Japanese retail foreign exchange (FX) traders. A 1997 reference in The Economist became well known, although the term was used as early as the 1980s. Despite the "Mrs." honorific, about 85% of Japan's retail currency traders as of 2019 were male, mostly in their 30s, 40s and 50s. Gearoid Reidy of Bloomberg News concluded that the term's meaning shifted from a Japanese equivalent of Joe Sixpack to specifically referring to FX traders.