For foreign residents of Japan who want to join IPO lotteries
This site tracks every IPO on the Japanese market — the schedule, the offer price, the brokers underwriting it, and what the shares actually did on their first day of trading. The detailed pages are in Japanese. These English pages cover the parts you need to decide whether Japanese IPOs are worth your time.
Only if you live in Japan. Japanese IPO shares are allocated through brokerage accounts, and those accounts require a Japanese address. If you are reading this from outside Japan, you cannot join these lotteries — not through an international broker either, because IPO allocations do not reach them.
If you do live in Japan, your nationality is not the obstacle. As an example, SBI Securities states that a foreign national can open an account with a residence card (or special permanent resident certificate) valid for at least two more months, an identity document showing a Japanese address, and a My Number. US citizens, green card holders and US residents face restrictions on some products.
How to open an account as a foreign resident →Requirements differ between brokers and change over time. Always check the broker's own current guidance before applying.
Reading from abroad? The listing results and the market data below are still worth a look — Japanese IPOs are unusual in how consistently they price below where they open, and that pattern says something about how the market works.
In a Japanese IPO you buy at a fixed offer price decided before listing. On the listing day the shares open at whatever the market decides — the first traded price. When the first traded price is above the offer price, selling straight away produces a gain.
Across the 23 listings recorded on this site, 14 opened above their offer price (61%), and the average change was +26.9%. Some open below the offer price, and those are included in that figure. Past results do not predict future ones.
Because demand exceeds supply, allocation is by lottery. You will lose most of the time. The way to improve your odds is to hold accounts at several brokers and apply consistently.
This site scores brokers out of 100 on how accessible their IPO lottery is to someone without a large balance: how equal the lottery is, whether money must be deposited before applying, how many IPOs they handle, whether losses accumulate toward future draws, and their record as lead underwriter. The same scoring is used on the Japanese pages.
These broker pages are in Japanese. The score, the lottery type and the deposit requirement are the parts that matter most, and they are summarised above.
Broker websites and application screens are in Japanese. These are a few of the words that decide whether you can finish an application.
Company descriptions and the guide articles are only in Japanese. Browser translation handles them reasonably well.
日本語版トップへThis site takes affiliate commission when someone opens a brokerage account through its links. There is no cost to you, and commission does not affect the ranking above. Nothing here is investment advice. IPO shares can and do trade below their offer price.
