It appears that online brokerage TD Ameritrade (AMTD) is set for a good day thanks to a weekend feature article from Barron's. The article notes that a "healthy number of individuals continue to indulge a passion for buying and selling stocks, and options and futures on those stocks, on a daily basis."

In fact, the article notes that AMTD clients placed 413,000 trades per day in the third quarter, a company record. Normally, trading volume will slide during the summer months, but this year was worse than previous thanks to the global economic slowdown. The online brokerage realized 12% new assets, which was greater than its yearly target range of 7% to 11%.

The New York Times [registration required] reports that the subprime meltdown has zipped across the Pacific to wipe out the fortunes of Japanese housewives who trade currencies after putting their children to sleep. Betting an average of $9.1 billion a day -- 20% of daily foreign exchange (FX) volume -- on a decline in the Yen relative to the dollar, many of these housewives were wiped out when the August credit crunch caused U.S. hedge funds to panic -- driving up the Yen's value and tanking their trades.

Japanese online investors lost $2.5 billion trading currency in August. And for many Japanese households, housewives' FX trading had been kept in the closet. Japanese tradition frowns on making money through means other than hard labor -- such as market speculation.

But this taboo is out in the open thanks to Mayumi Torii, according to the Times, a 41-year-old mother of one who said she earned $150,000 since she started margin trading in currencies early in 2006. Torii now appears on TV promoting her FX Beauties Club so she can "stand on my own economically," a necessity she discovered after her first marriage ended in divorce, and she and her son had to live off her meager savings. "I never want to feel that vulnerable again," she said.