The Financial Futures Association of Japan (FFAJ) has just reported the trading data for May 2015 for Japanese retail Forex and binary options brokers. Forex volumes did not provide a good piece of news, as trading activity kept declining last month. On the brighter side, binary options volumes managed to gain some ground and rose slightly on a monthly basis.
It is time to check out the particular numbers, starting with Forex data.
A total of 57 members reported their FX operating metrics for May 2015 to FFAJ, with their OTC retail Forex margin trading volumes amounting to a total of JPY 424 trillion (USD 3.43 trillion). The result is 8.4% down from the JPY 462.8 trillion recorded in April 2015, when the volumes were already declining.
The annual comparison was better, with May 2015 result up massive 77% from the volume of JPY 336 trillion seen in May 2014.
Let’s see what happened on the binary options trading field now. As stated previously, the binary options volumes delivered a better picture than the FX ones when it came to monthly comparisons.
- A total of nine FFAJ members reported their binary options trading metrics for May 2015.
- Their binary options trading volumes for May 2015 totaled JPY 42.04 billion, which is 1% higher than the result seen in April 2015.
- However, on an annual basis, the result in May 2015 lagged substantially behind the volumes of JPY 68.7 billion recorded in May 2014.
- Trading payments were down from JPY 18.6 billion in April 2015 to JPY 18.3 billion in May 2015.
- The number of existing accounts at binary options brokers rose by roughly 3,000 on a monthly basis to 316,562. However, the number of active accounts fell marginally to 14,227.
- Across trading instruments that are most popular as underlying assets for binary options, USD/JPY was most traded, followed by GBP/JPY and EUR/USD.
To download the full binary options report for May 2015, click here.
To download the full OTC FX margin trading report for May 2015, click here.