Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Investors looking to wager on stocks such as SpaceX and Micron Technology now have a new tool: single-stock futures that trade for nearly 24 hours a day.
CME Group on Monday launched cash-settled single-stock futures on 55 U.S. equities, along with micro-sized contracts on 22 names, marking the exchange’s push into a market designed to let investors take leveraged long or short positions around the clock.
The contracts trade on CME’s Globex platform from Sunday evening through Friday afternoon, with a one-hour daily maintenance break, enabling investors to respond to earnings and other market-moving events outside regular U.S. stock market hours.
The lineup includes futures tied to SpaceX, one of Wall Street’s most closely watched recent initial public offerings as well as Micron Technology, Nvidia, Tesla and Apple. Standard contracts represent 100 shares of the underlying stock, while micro contracts represent 10 shares.
“Retail brokers have characterized the launch as the year’s largest retail growth catalyst, with more than 35 retail partners targeting day one/week one readiness,” Morgan Stanley analyst Michael Cyprys said in a note.
CME said the products are designed to offer a simpler way to express bullish or bearish views than options. Unlike options, single-stock futures do not involve time decay or changing implied volatility, while requiring only a fraction of the capital needed because they are traded on margin. The contracts are cash settled, with final settlement based on the stock’s official closing price at expiration. They do not represent ownership in the companies.
The exchange said it may expand the lineup beyond the initial 55 stocks based on customer demand and its listing standards.
Exchange stocks like CME have come under pressure this year as perpetual futures emerging on overseas exchanges are seen as a rising threat to the traditional trading businesses even though most are currently not legal in the U.S.
CME, YTD
Kalshi and Coinbase were given the greenlight this year by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to offer cryptocurreny related “perps,” which are futures contracts without an expiration date. The regulatory move was seen as foreshadowing a wider approval for these types of products on equities. The overseas equity perps were in the spotlight ahead of the SpaceX IPO with international platforms like Hyperliquid offering perpetual futures in the Elon Musk space company ahead of its official debut.
