For a Western firm, entering the highly developed and lucrative Japanese FX market is no mean feat. In fact quite the opposite as Japanese companies are often very domestic market centric, and the investing public have for many years demonstrated unrelenting loyalty to Japanese firms.
On this basis, in the nation which accounts for some 30% of all retail FX order flow worldwide, some of the largest retail FX companies go from strength to strength with a single regional client base.
For this reason, today’s announcement by one of said firms, MONEX Group, that it has gone live with the Tradable platform, marks a milestone for the Danish developer of application-based trading platforms.
Tradable’s courtship of MONEX Group, in true Japanese tradition, was lengthy and considered, with MONEX Group having followed the relevant internal procedures before opting for the advanced platform.
MONEX Group clearly understands the tech-savvy approach of its client base, having co-hosted a hackathon in Tokyo earlier this year with Tradable CEO Jannick Malling, in which contestants could pit their programming skills against each other by developing APIs for the Tradable platform.
That event was held on Samarai Startup Island, within close proximity of the Tokyo University of Technology, representing one of the main venues for technology events in Tokyo. According to its organizers, over 50 developers attended in order to engage in coding and brainstorming before presenting their applications in the early evening, alluding to the enthusiasm for such an interactive platform on the Japanese market.
Interestingly, whilst Tradable makes its foray into the Japanese market via MONEX Group, it was indeed the very same FX brokerage which stood MetaTrader 4 down across its entire operations a few weeks ago in order to focus on its proprietary platforms in Japan and North America.