The Financial Futures Association of Japan (FFAJ) has published its over-the-counter (OTC) retail foreign Exchange (FX) margin trading for October today. Before October, the past four consecutive months had seen a decline in trading activity on FFAJ members. However, it appears October has finally bucked this trend.
The FFAJ is a self-regulatory body established in 1989 to govern the Japanese futures market. In October of this year, the number of members of the regulator remains unchanged from September, coming in at 53.
During October, the total OTC trading volume came in at ¥354 trillion. This is a notable increase of 33 percent from September of this year, which had a trading volume of ¥266 trillion. This, in turn, was down 10 percent month-on-month from August.
Since May of this year, which recorded a monthly trading volume of ¥371 trillion, OTC trading activity for FFAJ members had been on a constant downward trend. This is despite a consistent amount of OTC Retail FX Margin Trading Operators.
The trading volume for USDJPY, Cross Yen, also recorded an impressive trading volume of ¥314 trillion. When compared to the previous month, this is an increase of 37.6 percent. On-exchange contracts were also up by 19.3 percent or 4,038 contracts, coming in at 24,956 contracts in October.
FFAJ Sees a Decline in Binary Options Trading
The FFAJ also reported the OTC binary options trading volume of its members today. Unlike the retail FX figures, the trading volume for binary options was down from September 2018.
During the month, the total trading volume was ¥32.2 billion. This is down, but only slightly, by around 2.7 percent when compared to September’s volumes. The total number of trading Payments was 16.5 billion. This is also down from September’s number of 18.8 billion.
The decline in trading comes in spite of an increase in active accounts of 11,539 among the FFAJ’s members.
