After a weak performance in April, Gaitame, a Japanese foreign exchange (forex) broking giant, has published its trading volumes for May, with the firm posting some of its strongest results all year.
As Finance Magnates reported, April was a very sluggish month for the broker. Despite a 0.7 percent growth in accounts, the firm noted its weakest transaction volume since December of 2017.
In May, the number of accounts grew to 491,542. This is higher than the number of accounts in April (488,774) by 2,768 accounts or 0.6 percent. Although the difference is smaller than the percentage growth noted in April, the broker still reported solid results.
Taking a look at the deposit amount, which Gaitame actually managed to achieve a solid figure for in April, the broker reported the strongest result all year in May of ¥112.1 billion ($1.03 billion). This is stronger than April’s figure of ¥111.6 billion by 0.4 percent.
However, when measuring it against the same period of the previous year, May 2018, which reported a deposit amount of ¥118.6 billion, last month’s figure is lower by 5.5 percent.
Moving on to transaction volume, Gaitame managed to recover from April’s lows of ¥136.1 billion to note a transaction volume of ¥185.7 billion in the month of May. As a percentage, this represents a growth of 36.4 percent.
Although this is stronger than April’s result, the transaction volume reported for last month is still lower than the ¥272.2 billion recorded in January by 31.8 percent. On a year-on-year comparison, May of 2019’s volume has fallen by 20.3 percent, down from ¥233.1 billion in May last year.
Volatility Returns to the Markets in May
Overall, May has started to show signs of life again in terms of Forex trading volumes. As Finance Magnates reported, GMO Click, another retail brokerage in Japan, managed to report an uptick in its volumes in May.
This was largely due to a return in volatility to the markets, which particularly benefited crypto traders. LMAX Digital, the institutional cryptocurrency exchange of the LMAX Exchange Group, managed to achieve a record $5 billion trading volume in the month of May.
