Bloomberg, 18 October, on TBS Cross Dig: Kioxia Holdings shares, under a mountain of margin buying. The peak, late June. Then the AI unwind. Below half. The margin balance, still high. Japan Exchange Group, 15 October: about ¥920 billion, the largest on the whole list. The margin buy-to-sell ratio, 38, from about 18 a month ago. That is a stock. It is not a verdict that it must be sold.

Margin buying: money from the broker, shares. System margin, settlement in six months. Kubota Tomoichiro at Matsui: the problem is that it has swollen. The tape is thinner, digestion takes time, the price sits heavy. If individuals with the deadline at the door dump, the correction deepens. Yamafuji Shota at Tokai Tokyo: those who bought high, the deadline toward late December; the large balance, likely until then. Nikkei Asia, 6 October, the same fear, earlier.

Turnover, 16 October, about ¥770 billion. The peak, about ¥4.7 trillion. Down 84 per cent. Masuzawa Takehiko at Phillip Capital: the price is going sideways, the “buy because it rises, it rises because you buy” is gone. Hedge funds, day traders, fewer of them. Volatility has fallen. For the short term, dull. A 1-for-3 split, from October, should have made the ticket easier. Kubota: the tick is smaller, volumes are weak, day trading is harder, clients say. A sign of serious buying, not yet.

Profit, not dead, in Bloomberg’s figures. NAND, the price has risen. Net profit, the year to March 2027, consensus: about ¥5.6 trillion, ten times the previous year. Forward 12-month PE, 16 October, about 3.2, the lowest since January 2025. SanDisk, about 6.2. “Cheap”, in their comparison. It is not advice. TOPIX, the free-float weight, toward late November. One estimate: more than ¥2 trillion of passive buying. An estimate. If digestion lags, TOPIX may stay short of air, Bloomberg says. Kioxia’s weight in the index rises.

Nikkei, 14 October: the margin valuation ratio, three weeks of deterioration, minus 6.58 per cent as of 9 October. The minus, wider. Kioxia, in their telling, has swollen the paper loss. Another print. The same weight.

The exchange building from 2015 is not Friday’s screen. Who is right, Kubota or the profit consensus, shows if December passes without a wave of selling. It is not a trade recommendation.

Image: EXECUTOR, Tokyo Stock Exchange, 5 December 2015, public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The building, not Friday’s Kioxia screen.

Sources consulted: Kioxia Shares Face Headwinds From Margin-Buying Gone Wrong — Bloomberg; Kioxia sell date looms for retail investors who joined boom on margin — Nikkei Asia.