GMO Click, a retail broker in Japan, has reported its monthly trading volumes for the month of February. After achieving strong results in the first month of 2019, the firm has not been able to keep this pace and has seen a significant drop in foreign exchange (Forex ) trading.
Specifically, FX over-the-counter (OTC) volumes through GMO Click’s retail Forex Trading FX Neo platform, came in at ¥504.3 billion. This is the lowest monthly trading price recorded since August of 2014.
When measuring this value against the previous month, which had a monthly trading price of ¥794.2 billion, this is down by 36.5 percent. On a yearly comparison, February’s result is lower by 47.4 percent.
This drop in trading volume comes despite an uptick in the number of trading accounts, which grew by 6,177 accounts or 1.1 percent, to reach 592,172 accounts. February of 2019 had 67,717 more accounts than the same period in 2018.
Moving on to Click 365, forex margin trading also experienced a sharp drop in February. Although 6,187 new accounts were opened during the month the monthly transaction quantity, which was 346, 294 contracts, fell by 222,709 contracts or 39.1 percent month-on-month.
When measured against the prior year period, February 2018, the results look even worse as this month saw 722, 797 contracts traded. This means that February of 2019’s result was 376,503 contracts less year-on-year.
Equities Maintains Solid Results in February on GMO Click
The equities markets, however, managed to avoid the downward trend which plagued FX trading and actually achieved solid results. Over the course of February, the average number of contracts traded per day increased by 15.7 percent month-over-month to 48,084 contracts.
The average trading value per day was also up on a monthly comparison, rising by nine percent from ¥49.9 billion in January of 2019 to ¥54.4 billion.
