The Financial Futures Association of Japan today released its monthly FX margin trading report for July 2017. Data from 54 licensed retail FX brokers in Japan reveals an overall decline in Forex volumes on a month-on-month basis. The decline in volume in the market can be attributed to widespread Volatility , indecisiveness among traders and geopolitical tension.
Total FX over the counter (OTC) trading volume stood at $2.78 billion (¥306.3 trillion) in July 2017, down 10.39 percent month-over-month from $3.1 billion (¥341.8 trillion) in June 2017. The USD/JPY and cross yen volume decreased by 10.8 percent to $2.58 billion (¥284.4 trillion) in July 2017 from $2.90 billion (¥318.8 trillion) in June 2017.
Total open positions in the month of July increased by 6 percent, coming in at $536 million (¥59.14 billion), in which traders added new long positions worth $58 million (¥6.4 billion) to $327 million (¥36.04 billion) and decreased their short positions by almost $27 million ( ¥3 billion) to $209 million (¥23.09 billion). In USD/JPY and cross yen open positions, net long positions decreased by $90 million (¥10 billion). Total short and long positions stood at $309 million (¥34.1 billion) and $172 million (¥19.4 billion) respectively.
At the end of the month, the yen closed at 110.63 against the dollar with the highest and lowest being 114.47 and 110.30 respectively. It should be noted that during this year, only January and May saw an increase in volumes. And going by this trend, it is expected that there will be less improvement in volume growth.
