Terry Duffy, chairman and chief executive  of CME Group, said the group’s strong business performance has been overshadowed by discussions surrounding perpetual futures.

On 29 May 2026 the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said in a statement that it had approved the listing of the BTCPERP contract, a perpetual contract that references the spot price of bitcoin, as futures listed on designated contract market KalshiEX. A perpetual contract never ends, and tracks the spot rate of the underlying asset through a funding rate. CME has since filed a lawsuit against  the CFTC claiming that the regulator’s decision was wrong.

On CME’s second quarter results call on 22 July 2026 Duffy said that while this product may be dubbed futures, they function much more like swaps.

“They may appeal to certain retail traders seeking high leverage, but they are not appropriate for the institutional risk managers who comprise the vast majority of our business,” Duffy added.

Perpetual futures are highly engineered instruments that rely on frequent funding rate adjustments that revert the position back to the spot price and are known for high leverage and automated liquidations, according to Duffy. In addition, he said they offer limited investor protections and introduce heightened market risk, particularly for retail participants.

Nearly all, 94%, of CME’s volume originated from institutional customers in the first half of 2026 according to Duffy.

“Perpetual futures are in no way substitutes for the institutional hedging tools that these customers rely on,” he added. “Perpetuals do not provide price or time certainty, two necessary components for hedging exposures.”

Duffy gave the example of speaking to the second largest energy commercial participant in the world and they said they doing do not want  perpetual futures, as they cannot be used to risk manage the exposures on their books.

“They made it quite clear to me that the energy contracts that are available to them, whether it is at CME or somewhere else, are critically important to how they manage their business,” he added. “Trading  around a leveraged spot price does absolutely nothing for them in order to risk manage their product.”

He continued that he had similar conversations related to CME’s other products, such as rates and equities derivatives. In addition, Duffy argued that the total cost of trading perpetual futures is typically “orders of magnitude” more expensive than using CME’s futures when taking into account both the transaction fee and the daily funding cost.

Duffy said CME has the full technical and operational capabilities to launch perpetual futures.

“In fact, we have contract specifications and are prepared to bring these products to market should evolving demand or structural shifts make it appropriate to use them,” he added. “However, we have not heard demand from our customers for these products.”

Crypto derivatives

Crypto perpetuals are not new and Duffy highlighted that they existed before CME launched its crypto futures complex in 2017.

“We have built that business over the last nine years because our futures fill a market need that was not met by traditional crypto products, including perpetuals,” Duffy added. “Our crypto futures volume is up over sevenfold in the past three years and we will never sacrifice core protections in the name of innovation.”

Second quarter cryptocurrency ADV was up 32% year-on-year to 250,000 contracts, or $7.4bn, despite the fall in crypto prices. CME also launched several new crypto contracts including Avalanche, Sui Bitcoin volatility futures (launched 1 June ) and Nasdaq CME Crypto Index futures (launched 8 June).

CME’s crypto contracts went live for 24/7 trading on Friday 29 May 2026. Over $1.5bn traded over the first eight weekends, according to Tim McCourt, global head of equities, FX and alternative products at CME Group.

On 24 July 2026 CME’s existing 1-Oz gold futures will also begin trading 24/7. However, the CFTC stopped CME launching 24/7 trading of its existing crude oil contract. Duffy said: “We didn’t see anything novel or complex in our oil contract. I am a little surprised.”

He highlighted there is 24/7 oil being traded today by entities that are supposedly not allowed to have U.S. participants, but the market has yet to see how the federal government is policing this and prediction markets trade oil contracts 24/7.

McCourt said on the call that CME Group trades between $4.5bn and $6.5bn per day in its cryptocurrency complex versus about $270m for Kalshi’s bitcoin perpetual. In addition, CME had about $9bn and $10bn of average daily open interest in the complex for June and July.

“I think these numbers speak for themselves and we have an almost nine-year growth trajectory of serving the retail community,” McCourt added. “Along with the introduction of additional cryptocurrency futures and the introduction of 24×7 trading, we think the retail community in crypto is adequately served alongside the institutional community of clients at CME.”

Single stock futures

Duffy said: “We also continue to innovate a number of new tools to help clients manage risk and pursue opportunities, including single-stock futures, 1-ounce gold contracts being available 24/7, U.S. Treasury clearing and compute futures. We expect our innovative new offerings to further accelerate our growth as we build on our record-breaking performance in the first half of 2026.”

CME is due to launch single stock futures across more than 50 of the top U.S. stocks on July 27, pending regulatory review. The new offering will include 55 larger-sized and 22 micro-sized futures contracts.

Duffy said: “I’m probably the only one old enough to remember that when we first launched single stock futures they failed miserably. Sometimes timing is really important when you list products, and I will say timing is massively critical right now as we also get ready to list compute futures.”

CME argued that the world has changed since 2000 when the the group first tried to launch single stock futures due to increased participation in equity markets, the increased knowledge of retail investors and increased access for global investors on CME Globex.

Compute futures

In May this year CME said in a statement it is working with Silicon Data, which provides GPU market intelligence and benchmarks, and trading firm DRW to launch a compute futures market later this year, pending regulatory review.

Don Wilson, founder and chief executive of DRW, said in a statement that compute will become the largest commodity in the world.

“The exponential growth in spending on data centers as we move towards that reality has been hampered by the lack of a hedging vehicle,” Wilson added. “The launch of a compute futures market is an important solution to that problem that can help market participants manage price volatility and plan with greater certainty.”

Derek Sammann, global head of commodities markets at CME, said on the call that computer futures allow customers to manage their risk and price certainty around their data center business.

“It’s going to provide a mechanism for financing for a lot of these companies,” added Sammann. “There’s no real price discovery mechanism and that is the business that we are in, whether it’s agricultural, equities or energy.”

Julie Winkler, chief commercial officer at CME Group, said on the call that retail brokers globally are extremely excited about this new product innovation. She added: “They are seeing it as the single biggest retail growth catalyst of the year and we have over 35 retail partners that are targeting the readiness for week one.”

Treasury Link

On 8 July 2026 CME said in a statement that it will launch Treasury Link to connect U.S. Treasury futures and cash liquidity pools in the fourth quarter of 2026, pending regulatory review. The new service will enable transparent, centralized spread trading between CBOT Treasury futures and BrokerTec cash Treasuries on CME Globex.

Reed Staub, head of NA futures execution at Morgan Stanley, said in a statement: “The introduction of Treasury Link removes a significant variable – legging risk – from the equation, and represents a major leap forward in market structure efficiency.”

Treasury Link builds on the recent launch of BrokerTec Chicago, a second BrokerTec central limit order book (CLOB) targeting relative value traders. BrokerTec Chicago is co-located in the Aurora data center next to CME Group’s U.S. Treasury futures and options market. BrokerTec Chicago reached a single-day volume record of $1.2bn on 8 April 2026.

Volumes

Lynne Fitzpatrick, president and chief financial officer at CME Group, said on the call that ADV of 29.8 million contracts was the second highest Q2 in CME’s history.

Volume was within 1% of the record second quarter of 2025 with May and June particularly strong. May had a record ADV of 33.2 million contracts, up 15%, from a year ago and June had a record 30.6 million contracts, an increase of 19% over the same period.

Open interest rose 8% year-over-year 16% from 2025 year end, to 127 million contracts. Interest rates and equity index asset classes hit large open interest holders (LOIH) records during  the second quarter.

CME delivered record first half performance across revenue, adjusted operating income, adjusted net income and adjusted earnings per share, which were powered by record trading in the first quarter and the second-highest second volumes ever. Revenue of $3.6bn for the first half of this year was up 8% year-on-year and adjusted operating income increased 8% from a year ago to a record $2.6bn.

Fitzpatrick will become chief executive on 1 March 2027 when Duffy transitions to the role of executive chairman. She has been at CME for about 20 years and worked closely with Duffy on strategic  M&A transactions and partnerships.

“My vision for the firm is not a strong departure from what we’ve delivered over the last 20 years,” she added. “I think we have done well in terms of staying with what we are good at, running a world-class exchange, and looking for ways to bring on more product, more customers, and create more capital efficiencies for those clients.”