Margin transactions over the Internet are drawing attention.

An increasing number of individual investors with access to the Net have gone online to buy stocks on credit or sell them short, and many of them are increasing their presence in day-to-day stock trading.

The Tokyo stock market's deep slide in recent months has left many investors with heavy losses.

Hardest hit were investors who bought shares on credit.

On the other hand, investors who have sold stocks short have benefited greatly from the bear market.

Short selling carries considerable risks and requires a degree of experience and technical prowess to be successful.

It's so costly to carry short positions in margin accounts that short sellers are watching their timing to unwind their positions and cash in on profits.

Conversely, short positions with considerable appraisal losses tend to be left long unwound.

Apart from weekly Tokyo Stock Exchange reports on margin dealings on the Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya bourses, Matsui Securities Co. maintains its own statistics on orders received over the Internet.

According to our company's statistics, short positions held by our customers began showing appraisal gains after the turn of the year on average, and, as of Wednesday, the latent profits averaged 1.62 percent of the total value of those positions.

Appraisal losses on long margin positions, on the other hand, averaged 19.38 percent.

Conventional wisdom holds that appraisal losses of close to 20 percent on long margin positions against solid gains on short positions indicate an oversold market.

Over the past year, 71.9 percent of our customers over the Internet maintained their margin accounts and 43.2 percent of the total accounts showed an increase in value.

While nearly 30 percent of our customers have unwound their positions entirely, others have remained, reaping profits and increasing their margin accounts in value.

Trading over the Net is free from conflict of interest between stockbrokers and investors and the responsibility for losses lies solely with market players, making them more careful in new picks.