Less than a fortnight after Japan’s retail FX giant MONEX announced the phase-out of Metatrader 4 (MT4), another leading Japanese Forex broker – YJFX, has stated that it would stop offering the ubiquitous platform to its clients.
YJFX is a subsidiary of internet behemoth group Yahoo! Japan, and competes well among giants in a market which accounts for approximately 35% of all retail FX order flow worldwide. Indeed, YJFX is within the top five Japanese brokerages in terms of trading volumes.
The broker did not specify the reasons for halting MetaTrader 4, admitting in its announcement that the move has been the result of a very sudden decision. Whether related or not, the company’s demo MT4 service has been plagued with technical problems for the last couple of weeks. As LeapRate has reported previously, YJFX’s MetaTrader 4 demo server has been out of service since October 16, 2014, due to overload. Despite efforts by YJFX to restore the service, demo account use has been halted with live MetaTrader 4 accounts continuing to operate uninterrupted.
On this basis, no new applications for demo or live accounts for the popular platform are accepted by YJFX. Clients of the MT4 service have a time frame of between November 1, 2014 until February 28, 2015 to decide whether they want to cancel their accounts with YJFX altogether, or to have their assets transferred to another Forex service within the brokerage. Withdrawal requests will be accepted until March 7, 2015, and the official halt of the MT4 service is scheduled for March 13, 2015.
At the same time, GulliverFX – the UK Forex broker owned by Yahoo! Japan, is stepping up its efforts in terms of its MT4 offering and has just raised leverage and cut margins.
These matters appear to be very much Japan centric, with MONEX also currently phasing out MT4 and making way for application-based Tradable. The list of brokerages offering the popular trading platform in one of the most established and large FX markets is getting thinner, with the majority of MetaTrader 4 users in Japan now being clients of overseas companies with regulated operations in Japan, such as OANDA and Alpari.
The full announcement by YJFX on the MT4 phase-out can be read here.