The Financial Futures Authority of Japan (FFAJ) today published its latest report on financial futures transactions which includes retail FX and over the counter (OTC) contracts, for the quarter ending December 31, 2017, showing largely weaker trading volumes across key FX segments.
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According to data compiled by the FFAJ from its members for October-December quarter, total trading volumes on-Exchange fell to 14.4 million contracts, which was lower by nearly 8.7 percent from the 15.7 million contracts reported in the Q2 period through the end of September 2017.
The majority of the quarter-over-quarter decrease for on-exchange volumes were driven by nearly 10.6% drop in domestic trades, including the retail FX margin trading, whereas the overseas segment was less downbeat, having yielded a 5.0 percent loss at 5.9 million contracts.
In addition, the over-the-counter OTC domestic volumes published by the FFAJ for its 143 reporting members totaled ¥9.3 trillion ($86 billion) during the last quarter of the 2017 calendar year, down by nearly 15 percent quarter-on-quarter. This figure includes margin FX OTC volumes which fell with a similar percentage to ¥9.2 trillion from ¥10.8 trillion reported in the prior quarter.
Across a year-to-date (YTD) perspective, the OTC volumes figure has also dropped 8.5 percent year-over-year to ¥30.46 trillion ($284 billion) in the nine-month period from April through December 2017. This is compared to ¥36.2 trillion reported back in the same period from April (the start of the FFAJ’s fiscal year) in 2016.
The lower volumes in Q3 also mirrored the decrease in the total number of active customer accounts, albeit in a slower pace, which fell -2.4 percent quarter-on-quarter from 766,232 in Q2 to 747,985 reported for Q3 ending December 31, 2017.
