The Financial Futures Association of Japan (FFAJ) has published its over-the-counter (OTC) retail foreign Exchange (FX) margin trading for November on Friday. The previous month saw a rare uptick in trading activity on FFAJ members. However, it appears November has resorted back to the previously dominant declining trend.
The FFAJ is a self-regulatory body established in 1989 to govern the Japanese futures market. Before October, the past four consecutive months had seen a decline in trading activity. This is despite the data being based on a consistent number of 53 members since April 2018.
For November, the total OTC trading volume came in at ¥314 trillion ($2.8 trillion). This is a drop of around 11.2 percent from the previous month, which recorded an OTC retail FX margin trading volume of ¥354 trillion.
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. October of 2018 was the only month to go against this trend, with November negating most of the gains achieved in the previous month.
The trading volume for USDJPY, Cross Yen, also recorded a fall in the trading volume of 14.53 percent month-on-month, to reach ¥314 trillion. On-exchange contracts were also down by 10.71 percent or 2,672 contracts, coming in at 22,284 contracts in November.
Trading activity of OTC binary options decline for FFAJ members
The FFAJ also reported the OTC binary options trading volume of its members today. Similar to the retail FX figures, the trading volume for binary options was down from October 2018.
During the month, the total trading volume was ¥30.5 billion. This represents a decline of around 5.3 percent when compared to October’s volumes of ¥32.2 billion. Furthermore, the total number of trading Payments was 15.6 billion. Again, this was less on a month-on-month basis, falling by five percent from 16.5 billion.
