FFAJ Reports Monthly Decline in Binary Options Trading Volumes for February

The Financial Futures Association of Japan (FFAJ), released its trading volume data for the OTC binary options industry in Japan. The results were indicative of improved volumes YoY, despite declining relative to January’s results.

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February’s OTC binary options volumes came in at 37.92 billion JPY (roughly $355.7 million). As mentioned, the numbers represent a decline of 17.65% from the preceding month of January, during which trading volumes reached 46.05 billion JPY ($431.9 million).

However, February’s trading volumes actually increased by 7.45% YoY, from February 2017 levels of 35.29 billion JPY ($331.05 million).

Meanwhile, binary options saw a drop in the number of active accounts, despite an increase in the overall number of accounts. This is likely due to veteran account holders, who stopped trading, which surpassed the number of new accounts that were opened during the month of February.

For more context, there were a total of 363,138 binary options accounts in February of last year, and that number has increased by 6.5% to 386,923 last month, with 23,785 new accounts over the 12-month period.

However, there has actually been a decline in the number of active accounts, which came in at 10,284 in February of this year, a drop of 1,046 active accounts, marking a 9.23% YoY decline.

Of the total trading volume for the month, which amounted to 37.92 billion JPY (roughly $355.7 million), 15.85 billion JPY ($148.7 million) was attributed to the USDJPY currency pair. USDJPY trading volume also declined 16.29% relative to January’s levels of 18.93 billion JPY ($177.59 million).

The drop in monthly trading volumes for the binary options industry in Japan has become a trend. Trading volumes were reportedly down in October of last year. Similarly, overall volumes for the FX industry culminated in a downturn for the 3-month period spanning from October to December of last year.

There have been conflicting reports regarding the cause of the drop in trading volumes for binary options and FX across the Japanese market. Perhaps the underlying factor that has led to the drop in demand for these financial sectors can be attributed to the rise in demand for cryptocurrencies.