Gaitame, a Japanese foreign exchange broking giant, has published its trading metrics for September 2018 Wednesday. Although account numbers grew, transaction volumes fell on both a yearly and monthly basis.
Starting with the number of client accounts, the broker saw a total of 469,598 in September. This was a slight increase of 2,071 accounts, or 0.4 percent, from the previous month which is close to the monthly average increase. In September of last year, Gaitame had 454,941 client accounts. Therefore, the number of accounts this September of 2018 is up by around three percent year-on-year.
In October last year, for the first time in years, client accounts experienced a month-on-month drop, hitting 443,485. This followed the company seeing 454,941 registrants in September, its highest figure for 2017. However, since October’s lows, client accounts have seen consistent growth with September being no exception. In fact, client accounts surpassed September 2017 highs in March this year.
Looking at the group’s deposit totals in September of 2018, the broker disclosed a figure of ¥114.3 billion ($1.01 billion). When compared to August, this is a marginal increase of 0.5 percent. However, when compared to the same period last year, this is a drop of one percent. In August of this year, the broker saw ¥113.7 billion in deposit totals, which represented a fall of 5.2 percent month-on-month.
Since December 2016, the total deposit amount for the broker had been on a consistently upward trend. However, March’s volumes saw this trend falter for the first time in 15 months. Although April did see a good recovery and volumes in-line with the upward trend, the following months have not been able to get back to prior levels, with August and September’s results being the lowest since July last year.
Transaction Volumes for Gaitame Revert to Declining Trend
In August, for the first time since May this year, Gaitame saw a month-on-month uptick in transaction volumes as volume reached ¥212.9 billion. However, September has reverted back to the declining trend, experiencing a transaction volume of ¥160.4 billion. This is a fall of around 33 percent month-on-month. Compared to the same time period last year, which recorded a volume of ¥236 billion, September’s result was more than 47 percent lower year-on-year.
