Please note: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. The mention of specific stocks is not a recommendation to buy or sell any securities. The author may hold positions in the equities discussed. Investing carries inherent risks, and you should always conduct your own due diligence before making any financial decisions.
I used my super duper bullet proof value investing screener in LSEG Workspace (the Bloomberg terminal for poorer people 🥲) to find the most interesting value investing case right now on a quite frothily valued Japanese stock market. The Nikkei 225 index just breached the 65,000 mark for the first time in May 2026, and everyone on the street is losing their collective minds over semiconductor stocks and AI hype.
After a lot of digging, I found a weird anomaly in the screener I first couldn’t believe, a gaming company with growing profits, one of the highest margins in the industry, and yet valued at P/E<11x.
On the surface, Koei Tecmo Holdings (3635) make video games about historical warlords hitting thousands of peasants with giant swords. Under the hood, they are a hyper-aggressive hedge fund wrapped in a digital entertainment publisher’s trench coat.
Every analyst covering Koei values the company strictly on software sales and gaming projections. But they completely miss that the company makes more money from massive offshore trades run by its legendary 77-year-old Chairwoman Emeritus than from its entire video game portfolio!
The market is pricing Koei Tecmo as a mediocre software developer, entirely missing the fact that it is the most fascinating corporate structure in Japan right now.
