Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
Japan’s forex and binary options markets continue to perform very poorly in terms of trading volume. The year started strong, but since then both markets have been shrinking significantly.
The country saw the combined forex trading volume of brokers that offer over-the-counter (OTC) forex services going down by 11% on the month to JPY 313.7 trillion in October 2016, according to the data published on Tuesday by the Financial Futures Association of Japan (FFAJ). The figure is just a tiny bit higher than that reported in August when volume hit the lowest so far in 2016. Compared to a year earlier, October OTC forex trading volume posted a drop of 16.9%.
Japan’s on-exchange forex trading volumes, however, posted a monthly increase of 5.7% to JPY 3.4 trillion last month, or up 3.1% year-on-year. Although the figure represents an increase, it is still very low compared to the beginning of the year.
The binary options market in Japan also performed very poorly last month. The combined trading volume from binaries stood at JPY 32.82 billion in October, the lowest since the beginning of the year. In comparison, in January the trading volume exceeded JPY 62 billion, which is close to double last month’s levels. On an annual basis, the volume dropped 28.6%.
The number of active binary options traders has also bee on the decline. There were 10,980 active traders at the end of October, compared to 13,703 in January.
Forex | Binary Options | ||||||
Trading volume | Number of brokers | Trading volume | Accounts | Number of brokers | |||
Over-The-Counter | On-Exchange | Existing | Active | ||||
Jan | 532.32 trl | 4.76 trl | 53 | 62.06 bn | 337,932 | 13,703 | 8 |
Feb | 593.97 trl | 4.85 trl | 53 | 51.65 bn | 339,997 | 13,656 | 8 |
Mar | 439.89 trl | 3.72trl | 53 | 40.35 bn | 341,946 | 12,786 | 8 |
Apr | 416.41 trl | 3.17trl | 52 | 36.48 bn | 343,455 | 12,225 | 8 |
May | 365.99 trl | 3.14trl | 52 | 30.40 bn | 344,396 | 11,880 | 7 |
June | 429.31 trl | 4.73trl | 52 | 41.04 bn | 346,292 | 12,676 | 7 |
July | 454.35 trl | 3.40trl | 52 | 44.59 bn | 348,508 | 11,873 | 7 |
Aug | 313.53 trl | 2.52trl | 53 | 35.15 bn | 350,123 | 11,194 | 7 |
Sept | 352.46 trl | 3.18 trl | 53 | 37.84 bn | 352,151 | 11,905 | 7 |
Oct | 313.68 trl | 3.36 trl | 53 | 32.82 bn | 355,023 | 10,980 | 7 |
In October, the volumes of trading in the USD/JPY, the most traded currency pair in Japan, also dropped significantly from the previous month by 19.7% to JPY 218.7 trillion from forex operations and by 21.2% to JPY 14 billion from binary options on the pair.
In line with the overall trend for Japan, Monex Group and GMO Click, two of the leading brokers in the country, both reported worsened trading metrics for last month.
