The Tokyo headquartered brokerage operating under Monex Group Inc, today reported its April trading metrics including Global FX volume which showed a decrease of 17.7% over the prior month as volumes fell from $40.5 billion to $33.3 billion Month-over-Month (MoM).
Daily Average Revenue Trades (DARTs) dropped from 340,766 in March to 301,208 in April, lower by 39,561 or 11.6% MoM, as trading volumes decreased despite the higher number of trading days in April over the prior period. The company has 2,817 more active accounts with a total of 894,140 reported for April, when compared MoM, and from that total the number of FX OTC active accounts was up by 50 from 62,484 in March to 62,534 April.
The TradeStation Brand, including the business line IBFX operated under Monex Group, reported 650 more active accounts in April at 83,817, over 83,167 for March, although it too had lower DARTs per day over that period with that total down 15,322 from 181,781 in March. The number of total client assets at TradeStation was reported as $3.574 billion, down $13 million from$3.587 billion in March, or little changed at barely four-tenths of a percent MoM. For TradeStation the number of business days didn't change from March to April and remained at 21 trading days.
The downtrend in volume appears to be persisting from prior months as a decrease was blamed on a lack of volatility by some analysts, with for example the USD/JPY caught in a tight trading range, whereas others have speculated that the fragmentation of volumes were as a result of new regulations that went into effect at the start of the year (Swap Execution Facilities in the US and EMIR reporting in Europe), as well as the ongoing probe into major foreign exchange dealers -which has resulted in an exodus of very senior foreign exchange traders - which may all have had a combined effect on the overall drop in FX Market volumes since January's high.
Shizuoka Bank in Japan acquired a nearly 20% stake in Monex Group as announced at the start of April, in a deal valued close to a quarter of a billion US dollars. The company also announced that it had joined MIT Media lab as a consortium laboratory member, as covered by Forex Magnates in April, and shortly afterwards reported fiscal year 2014 results which showed revenue up 50% year-over-year.
