The Future of Stocks

Last time, we watched the market’s protagonist shift from people to machines, while online brokerages and index investing invited ordinary individuals back into the market. Invisible algorithms contesting thousandths of a second, and countless individuals before their screens building up their assets bit by bit. Out of this two-layer structure, the market is stepping into a new age.

In this final chapter, we survey that ‘future.’ Now that schemes have broadened the base of individual investing, that an unprecedented asset called crypto has appeared, and that AI has begun to take part even in the market’s judgments — where is the relationship between humans and the market headed? At the end of this long journey, which began 400 years ago with the wisdom of sharing risk born in a Dutch port town, we deliberately do not rush to a conclusion. Let us set out a few signs, and the questions surrounding them, and think about what lies ahead together. This is not a story that urges you to invest, but an attempt to look anew at the practice of stocks as a matter of culture.

A scheme that invites the age of individual investing — NISA as an entrance

In recent years, behind the surge of interest in investing in Japan lies a certain scheme. It is NISA — the small-amount tax-exempt investment scheme.

Normally, profits gained from investing are taxed, but under this scheme, profits earned within a certain allowance are not taxed. The general NISA began in 2014, and in 2018 the Tsumitate NISA, suited to long-term accumulation, was said to have been added. Then in 2024, the scheme was greatly renewed: the tax-exempt investment allowance was widened, and it was said to have become a permanent scheme usable at any time. With this, even people who had never had any connection to investing came to turn their eyes toward the market.

The topics this chapter speaks of — NISA, accumulation, diversification — do not urge any particular action upon the reader. As this series has consistently shown, light and shadow coexist in the market. A broadening base is the light of more people gaining the chance to build assets, while at the same time it carries the shadow of more people swinging between joy and worry over price moves with little knowledge. A scheme is no more than an entrance, and how one walks the path beyond it is left to each individual.

Assets without precedent — crypto and emerging markets

While the market was being opened to individuals, an asset with no precedent at all in history so far also appeared. Its symbol is crypto.

In 2008, a figure (or group) of unknown identity calling themselves Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper, and the following year, 2009, the mechanism called Bitcoin is said to have begun operating. Rather than being issued by a state or central bank, it held together because computers around the world verified records against one another — such was this new form of money. Its true identity remains undisclosed to this day. At first it belonged to a very small group of people, but in time it rose and fell violently as an object of speculation and came to draw the world’s attention.

The judgment surrounding crypto is still sharply divided. While some voice hopes that it is a free form of value unbound by existing finance, criticism that its price swings are far too violent and that it carries a heavy speculative tint remains deeply rooted. Incidents such as fraud and the collapse of exchanges have been repeated. In 2024, an exchange-traded fund holding Bitcoin directly was reported to have been approved for the first time in the United States, and it has also been seen as a step closer to the world of traditional finance. Yet whether this new asset will put down firm roots in society, or become one more bubble that leaves its name in history — no one yet holds that answer. The markets of emerging nations, and the new financial products that appear one after another, likewise carry both great opportunity and great peril together.

The future of humans and the market — asking anew in the age of AI

Finally, there is one more great change we must touch upon. It is the rise of AI, artificial intelligence.

Beyond the high-frequency trading we saw in the previous chapter, in recent years AI has begun to be used in earnest in attempts to read vast amounts of data and predict the movements of the market. To catch faint signs that humans overlook, and to judge without being swept up by emotion — such hopes are placed upon AI. The scenes in which AI takes part in investment advice and market analysis are widening. Yet here too, light and shadow are back to back.

Here, let us look back on the long road we have walked. The joint-stock company, born as the wisdom of sharing risk. The tulips and the South Sea bubble, swollen by crowd psychology. Wall Street, begun beneath a buttonwood tree. The dark Thursday, and the regulations built upon its scorched ruins. Postwar recovery and the spread to the masses. Black Monday and deregulation. The frenzy and collapse of Japan’s bubble. The IT bubble and the global financial crisis. And on to the age of algorithms and individuals. The form changed many times. Yet what flowed beneath it was always the same. Hope that believes in a better future, and the desire to want more. The market is the mirror in which both of those, in humans, are reflected most honestly.

What the future of stocks will be, we hold no certain answer. Whether AI will rule the market, whether crypto will become the new common sense, how far the market will return to the hands of individuals — all lie beyond the accumulation of choices that countless people will make from here on. The one thing that can be said is that the market will go on reflecting human hope and desire. What is reflected in that mirror rests, no one else’s, in our own hands.

400 years ago, to send ships out onto the stormy sea, strangers shared risk with one another — to all the readers who have followed this long story, begun from that small wisdom, all the way to here, I give my heartfelt thanks. If gazing at once upon prosperity and crash, hope and desire, that light and shadow together, can become a clue to knowing ourselves as reflected in the mirror that is the market, no joy could surpass this. Without rushing to an answer, let us go on questioning together from here as well.

【A History of the Stock Market: How Markets Move the World — End】