October volume metrics of $597 billion at Japan’s largest retail forex broker are down 6% from September.

Japanese retail forex traders’ enthusiastic return to trading in 2013 seems to have waned somewhat in the second half of the year… GMO Click, Japan’s largest retail forex broker, has reported October trading volumes of ¥59.1 trillion, or about $597 billion, down 6% from September — and down 45% from June’s all-time best at GMO nearing $1.1 trillion.

The cause? Low volatility. October saw the USDJPY trade in a very tight range between 97-99 (see chart below), with little intra-day action. Gone are the days we saw in the first half of the year when newly-installed Japanese PM Shinzo Abe would make daily proclamations about quantitative easing which swung the markets wildly in one direction and then another.

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