KUALA LUMPUR (July 23): Rakuten Trade Sdn Bhd's second product, Contra Trading, has racked up some 800 clients within one month of being launched. 

The contra account offers investors a trading limit of three or five times the value of cash or collateralised shares. 

Speaking at a media briefing today, its managing director Kaoru Arai said he sees growth coming from the contra trading and is anticipating the growth momentum to continue; however he declined to disclose its internal targets.

From the 800 contra clients, 70% are from Rakuten Trade existing cash upfront account clients. 

About 42% of these 800 contra clients have about three years' trading experience, indicating these clients are relatively experienced in trading, compared with a majority of 43% clients trading in cash upfront, indicating zero experience in trading.

Nevertheless, Arai noted it is too early to determine the trend coming from contra trading.

Currently, contra trading contributes about 20% of its total revenue in just its first month. 

As at June 2018, Rakuten Trade has achieved 14,956 accounts, comprising of 14,337 cash upfront clients, while 619 contra account clients. Year-to-date, the brokerage has over 15,000 accounts.

For its cash upfront service, Arai said Rakuten Trade is seeing approximately more than 1,000 increase in clients, and he is seeing more uptrend momentum moving forward, depending on the market condition.

“If market condition is good, then it (clients' growth) is higher than our expectation, but if market is volatile, then, it will be within our expectation,” Arai said, adding investors’ appetite is seen to be huge, despite the market being “sluggish” at the moment.