CME Group Pulls 24/7 Oil Filing as Compute Futures Await CFTC Review, While Record Q3 Volume Lifts Margin Savings to $100 Billion a Day
Third-quarter earnings call, October 21, 2026: record ADV of 29.4 million contracts, EPS of $3.02, and a regulatory fight over perpetuals
CME Group reported third-quarter results that were strong by almost any measure, but the more consequential news for investors came from the product pipeline. Management disclosed that it has withdrawn its 24/7 10-barrel WTI filing after a CFTC stay and commercial-user pushback, and said the timing of the compute futures launch is out of its hands until the CFTC finishes a full review. Chairman and CEO Terry Duffy was blunt about the first point: "I'm surprised our 24/7 oil got held up." He said commercial participants "did not want to staff up another desk," and that CME will hold off listing the contract "until people are more comfortable."
Compute futures: a new risk market that depends on regulators
CME filed compute futures under CFTC Rule 40.3, which triggers a full review. The agency extended its comment period by 45 days, to roughly November 9. After that it must decide, and Duffy said the timing "is still unknown." He added that "there's not much more we can do until we get the approval from the government," and described the effort as "the long game."
Derek Sammann, who runs CME's energy business, gave the first detailed account of how the product was built. CME has worked on it for almost two years and chose Silicon Data as its index provider after reviewing other indexes and price reporting agencies. Sammann said the provider collects "data observation at huge scale across dozens of platforms and thousands of data points," has a robust forward curve, and publishes an index that is already IOSCO-compliant. Early interest is coming from neocloud operators, data center operators and banks. Sammann argued that banks lending into AI infrastructure carry "an unhedgeable risk" that this product is meant to address. Funds and proprietary traders are also engaged. He said chip providers and other new commercial participants could become cross-sell targets, as battery metals did. Sammann called demand "significant" but acknowledged the product still needs approval before it can trade.
24/7 trading: gold, silver and crypto work, but primary products must wait
CME extended 24/7 trading to its 1-ounce gold and 100-ounce silver contracts during the quarter, building on the 24/7 crypto products launched earlier this year. Weekend volume is running at roughly 20% to 30% of average daily volume in those contracts, according to a question from Piper Sandler's Patrick Moley that management did not dispute. Duffy said participants are already hedging over the weekend through VPNs on overseas venues, which U.S. participants are not supposed to use, and that he has seen "no evidence of any policing of that activity."
Duffy still expects the market to go 24/7 across all products, but he set a high bar for the largest contracts. "The U.S. equity market alone is $76 trillion, nobody can prefund that on a Friday." He said listing a primary product around the clock will become "harder and harder" until U.S. banking infrastructure also runs 24/7. That points to small-contract experiments rather than a near-term move for core benchmarks.
Perpetuals litigation and the prediction-market question
CME is in litigation with the CFTC over perpetual futures. New General Counsel John Marchese said a motion to dismiss has been filed and opposed, that CME will brief the substance of the case, and that he expects it to be "fully before the judge in December." Duffy argued that a perpetual's funding-rate mechanism makes it a swap under Dodd-Frank, comparing it to a fixed-versus-floating exchange of payments. On whether CME would list perpetuals on equity indexes if it lost, where it holds exclusivity, he declined to commit: "we'll cross that bridge when we get to it, and not until."
Duffy used similar language on prediction markets tied to single stocks. He rejected the idea that "every market should have a prediction market associated with it" and said single stock futures will launch without one. His systemic-risk warnings, he clarified, refer to the 25x to 250x leverage offered on overseas perpetual platforms. He would not say whether leverage caps would change his view until he sees a written proposal.
Single stock futures show early traction, with caveats
Single stock futures have traded a little over 350,000 contracts since launch, representing about $3.5 billion of notional. The 100-share contract covers 55 large U.S. names and the 10-share contract covers 22 of them. CME has distribution through 25 of its top retail broker partners, and more FCMs are due to go live in the fourth quarter. Management acknowledged that "it does take time" to work through FCMs and vendors. CME also tried the product in 2000, and Duffy noted it "did not get off the ground very well." Julie Winkler pitched it to institutions as a capital play, citing cross-margining against equity index futures, and to retail as an options alternative with "static delta, zero option Greeks" and no time decay.
More broadly, retail acquisition continues. CME added well over 100,000 new retail traders in the quarter, up 40% from a year ago, and the E-nano suite set a one-day record of more than 121,000 contracts on Tuesday.
Financial results: records in volume and market data
Third-quarter average daily volume rose 16% to 29.4 million contracts, a third-quarter record, with double-digit growth in all six asset classes. Revenue grew 13% to $1.7 billion. Market Data hit a record $243 million, up 20%, its 34th consecutive quarter of annual growth. Adjusted expenses were $532 million, and $428 million excluding license fees, which rose with equity volume (up 23%). Adjusted operating income was $1.2 billion, up 15%, at a 69.4% margin. Adjusted EPS was $3.02, up 13%. CME returned nearly $1 billion to shareholders: $465 million in dividends and $524 million in buybacks. Fourth-quarter volume is running 17% above last year's record, and year-to-date volume is up 12%.
International ADV reached a record 9 million contracts, up 22%, with APAC up 28% and EMEA up 20%. Energy grew 40%, agriculture 28% and equity indexes 24%.
Market data growth is broad, and audits are fading as a driver
CFO Lynne Fitzpatrick said Market Data growth is split roughly into thirds. One third comes from professional subscribers, one third from nonprofessional retail and simulated-trading platforms, and the rest from data feed demand, term SOFR, pricing adjustments and policy changes. Audits and catch-up payments contributed $4.7 million, below the second quarter. More than 50% of the business is outside the U.S. Management declined to offer a growth outlook.
Pricing, Cboe licensing and net interest
Pricing changes effective October 1 should lift clearing and transaction fees by 0.5% to 1% annualized. They cover crypto, grains, some interest rate tiers and micro equities. Fitzpatrick said CME is moving away from a single annual price increase toward adjustments "spread out over the course of the year."
On Cboe's 25-year S&P licensing extension, Duffy said CME, as a JV partner with S&P, benefits from escalators beginning in 2027 rather than 2032. Terms are undisclosed, but he called it "very much a winning proposal." Separately, clearinghouse cash averaged $147 billion, down from about $150 billion in Q2, at a similar yield of about 33 basis points, which explains the lower net interest line. Corporate cash earned about $27 million.
Capital efficiency: $100 billion a day, up from $40 billion
Margin savings for customers averaged more than $100 billion a day, which Duffy noted was "just $40 billion, not too long ago." Equity savings were just under $47 billion in Q3: about $42 billion from base futures and options offsets and just over $5 billion from the CME-OCC cross-margin agreement. Tim McCourt said roughly 60% of this year's increase came from new positions and 40% from higher index levels. That split matters because the 40% would fall if markets decline.
In rates, swap portfolio margining set a daily record of $14 billion on September 30. September savings averaged $13.2 billion, up 58% year over year, versus about $7.2 billion a day in 2024. The CME-FICC cross-margin program has 24 clearing members registered and averaged $2.3 billion a day in September, with a $2.7 billion record, up from the $1 billion to $1.5 billion cited early in the year. Many FCMs are targeting a fully operational program in Q4. CME Securities Clearing remains on track to launch December 7, ahead of the SEC Treasury clearing mandate. Treasury Link, which enables spread trading between Treasury futures and BrokerTec cash Treasuries with guaranteed execution and no legging risk, went live in the test environment over the weekend.
Open interest: limited growth, with a structural explanation
Open interest reached 128 million contracts at quarter-end and exceeded 133 million on the call. JPMorgan's Ken Worthington pointed out that year-over-year open interest growth was near zero in equities (+0.2%) and low in rates (+1.2%), and that energy fell 3.6%. Duffy's answer was that weekly options expirations now compress open interest relative to quarterly expirations. Holding it at these levels is "a good problem to have." That explanation is plausible but does not fully answer why volume growth is coming from velocity rather than larger positions.
Cloud migration, capital allocation and the retail-competition question
CME opened its Dallas disaster-recovery facility on Google Cloud for client testing in June, with latency and consistency "as good or better" than on-premises. Migration of the primary Chicago region is expected to begin in late 2027. Because of the positive testing and that timeline, CME no longer needs to relocate its livestock markets to Dallas in the interim.
On capital, Fitzpatrick said the OSTTRA proceeds have been fully redeployed through buybacks. CME has very low debt and says it is "choosy" about M&A, looking only for deals that bring clients, products or capital efficiencies. Asked whether FCMs and retail platforms that launch their own prediction or perpetual products could divert flow, Duffy conceded he was "speculating at best." He argued that 94% of CME's business is institutional and that retail-versus-retail markets are not durable: "I have not seen one in my 46 years in the business."