Tokyo Financial Exchange (TFX), a Japanese futures exchange, released its trading report for April this Monday. The exchange saw a substantial decrease in month-on-month trading volume last month.

This decrease seems to have been a part of a wider industry trend. After finishing 2017 on a low, the first quarter of 2018 saw an uptick in investor activity that boosted trading volumes across markets. This uptick was met by a slump in April that saw trading volumes shrinking for brokers and exchanges.

TFX was not immune to this. In April, the firm saw its trading volumes shrink by 23.9 percent. The exchange finished the month with a total trading volume of 2,581,263 contracts - down from 3,391,285 in March.

Interest Rates Down, FX Way Down

In large part, this decline was due to an almost Halving in the trading of interest rate futures contracts. TFX ended March with an interest rate futures trading volume of 222,918 contracts. In April this number decreased by 43 percent to 127,048.

More significantly, FX daily futures contracts declined substantially. TFX ended March with a total of 2,766,712 FX daily futures contracts. At the end of April, this figure had fallen to 2,143,488 - equivalent to a 22.5 percent decline.

FX futures trading volumes shrank primarily due to a contraction in the level of dollar-yen trades. In March, TFX had a dollar-yen trading volume of 841,874 futures contracts. In April this fell to 606,523 - a 28 percent decline.

Beyond the dollar, Turkish Lira and Australian Dollar trades decreased. Lira-yen volumes decreased from 457,115 at the end of March to 290,010 in April - a 36.6 percent decline. Similarly, Australian Dollar-yen trading decreased by 36.9 percent. In March, TFX saw a total of 260,329 Australian Dollar-yen futures contracts, a number that decreased to 164,155 in April.