The Financial Futures Association of Japan (FFAJ) on Thursday reported the second-quarter results of member activity. The self-regulatory body established in 1989 was created to govern the Japanese futures market and currently, it has 141 members, three less than the previous quarter.
Overall, FFAJ reported a strong decline in trading activities across all sectors from the April to June period. During the quarter, the member’s of the regulator reported 16,632,485 on-exchange quarter which is 12.39 per cent or 2,253,177 contracts less than the previous quarter. The biggest loss was reported in overseas on-exchange contract which recorded loss of 13.72 per cent or 1,160,056 contracts.
The over-the-counter (OTC) domestic contracts segment also witnessed a slow performance and recorded, ¥10.1 trillion ($91.1billion) worth of contracts traded during the quarter, which is 13.67 per cent less than the previous quarter from ¥11.7 trillion ($105.5 billion) worth of contracts.
Instruments-wise, trade on-exchange domestic futures interest rate contracts fell by whopping 34.1 per cent, to 710,637 contracts this quarter from 1,078,409 contracts in the first quarter of 2018.
The number of futures interest rate contracts also fell by 13.8 per cent during the quarter to reach 6,350,771 contracts. Options contracts also fared poorly in the category with total traded contracts fell by 18.53 per cent compared to the previous quarter to 840,523 contracts.
The foreign exchange segment was bit positive and the downside was limited. In the foreign exchange domestic contracts, the members reported 8,623,653 futures contracts, compared to the first quarter where 9,449,002 were traded in which decline was 8.73 per cent. The decline in the volume of margin forex contract is also the same percentage at 8.73 per cent.
The overseas futures contracts were the only positive segment in the second quarter with total traded contracts at 105,751 contracts which is almost 102.84 per cent increase 52,134 contracts traded in the previous quarter. But, the options contract were down quarter-on-quarter by 74.30 per cent.
