In February, CME Group announced plans to launch financially settled single-stock futures on more than 50 large-cap US equities beginning this summer, pending regulatory approval[1]. The contracts will reference names from the S&P 500, Nasdaq-100, and Russell 1000 indices, including Alphabet, Meta, NVIDIA, and Tesla.
For those of us who have been around for a while, the announcement carried a familiar echo. Single-stock futures have been tried before in the US, twice actually, and both times they failed to gain meaningful traction. So, the obvious question is: why will this time be any different?
To answer that, it helps to understand what went wrong the first time around. And what went wrong starts with a regulatory turf war that lasted two decades.
Twenty Years of Prohibition
Single-stock futures were effectively illegal in the United States from 1982 to 2000. The Shad-Johnson Accord[2], reached between the heads of the SEC and CFTC, gave the CFTC full jurisdiction over stock index futures and the SEC jurisdiction over stock index options, but banned futures on individual stocks entirely. As former CFTC Chairman Philip Johnson publicly admitted, the ban existed not because the products were dangerous, but because he was unwilling to share regulatory jurisdiction with the SEC[3].
For twenty years, single-stock futures were as unavailable in the US as they were popular overseas. While exchanges globally built thriving markets around the product, American traders were locked out entirely.
That changed with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000[4], which lifted the ban and created a new product category called “security futures.” The catch was that security futures would be jointly regulated by both the SEC and the CFTC – a compromise that has created confusion since its inception[5].
The OneChicago Experiment
Two exchanges launched to trade single-stock futures in November 2002. OneChicago was a joint venture of the CME, CBOE, and CBOT. NQLX was a partnership between Nasdaq and the London International Financial Futures Exchange (LIFFE).
NQLX never got off the ground. By mid-2004, its volume had dipped to fewer than 400 contracts per day, and it suspended trading that September, transferring its remaining contracts to OneChicago[6].
OneChicago fared better, at least relatively. It survived for 19 years, eventually listing futures on approximately 1,800 equities, ADRs, and ETFs[7]. But it never achieved meaningful volume. When it finally closed its doors on September 18, 2020, it was less a shock and more an overdue acknowledgment of a product that never found its footing in the US market[8].
Why They Failed
The reasons for OneChicago’s failure are well documented and worth examining, because they explain why the CME’s 2026 launch is structured so differently.
Margin killed the product before it had a chance. The initial margin requirement for single-stock futures was set at 20% of the underlying position’s value – a compromise between the CFTC’s risk-based approach and the SEC’s credit-regulation framework under Regulation T. At 20%, single-stock futures were far more expensive to trade than comparable options strategies or stock positions in a portfolio margin account. As OneChicago itself pointed out in regulatory filings, 92% of its products were margined at levels higher than its own clearinghouse risk models warranted[9]. In a twist that could only come from a regulatory process, the SEC and CFTC jointly approved lowering the margin to 15% in November 2020, two months after the last exchange trading single-stock futures had already shut down[10].
Dual regulation created compliance friction. Because security futures straddled the line between securities and futures, every aspect of listing, trading, and clearing required coordination between two agencies with fundamentally different mandates – one focused on investor protection, the other on market efficiency. FIA President Walt Lukken, who helped draft the CFMA while serving on the Senate Agriculture Committee and later served as acting CFTC chairman, called single-stock futures the clearest example of how failures to harmonize regulations across the two agencies resulted in “impractical and unstable regulatory structures”[11].
Certain corners of the industry didn’t want them to succeed. Major brokerages were reluctant to market single-stock futures because the products threatened their profitable stock-loan and prime brokerage businesses. The options industry, led in part by the CBOE – ironically a co-owner of OneChicago – actively lobbied for higher margins to prevent futures from competing with options on a level playing field[12]. Physical delivery requirements also added operational complexity that made the product less attractive compared to other derivatives products.
The joint venture structure was a mismatch. As John Lothian noted at the time of OneChicago’s closure, the collaboration between CME Group, Cboe, and Interactive Brokers – three firms that were increasingly competitors – made less sense with each passing year[13]. By 2020, none of the partners had sufficient incentive to invest in growing the exchange.
What’s Different This Time
CME Group’s 2026 launch addresses several of these structural problems directly.
First, and most importantly, the contracts will be financially settled[14]. This eliminates the operational headache of physical share delivery, stock borrowing, and the settlement logistics that plagued OneChicago. Financial settlement also makes these products cleaner for international participants who may not want to deal with US equity custody.
Second, the regulatory landscape is shifting. The SEC-CFTC Memorandum of Understanding signed in March 2026 explicitly prioritizes modernizing clearing, margin, and collateral frameworks, and reducing friction for dually registered entities[15]. While the MOU is non-binding, it signals a willingness to cooperate that was conspicuously absent during OneChicago’s existence. Whether this goodwill translates into more competitive margin requirements remains to be seen, but the tone has undeniably changed.
Third, this is a CME Group product, housed on CME infrastructure, cleared through CME’s clearinghouse, and benefiting from the margin offsets available across CME’s existing equity derivatives complex. As we detailed in TWWDT #14, CME’s ability to vertically integrate trading and clearing under one roof has been the key driver of its dominance over the past 25 years. Single-stock futures will be no different.
Fourth, the demand environment has fundamentally changed. CME noted that equity derivatives hit record levels in 2025, with futures and options averaging 7.4 million contracts per day[16]. Retail participation in derivatives has surged since 2020. The success of micro equity index futures also has demonstrated that there is a deep and growing appetite for capital-efficient, right-sized equity exposure through futures.
What to Watch
For all the structural improvements, this launch is far from a sure thing. The product’s success hinges on a few critical factors.
Margin levels will matter enormously. CME has not yet released final contract specifications or initial margin requirements. If the margins end up looking like a version of the old 15-20% framework, the contracts will struggle against options and ETFs for the same reason OneChicago did. If CME can leverage its SPAN margining system to offer risk-based margins that reflect the actual volatility of the underlying, as it does for every other futures product, the economics become much more compelling.
Liquidity at launch will be critical. OneChicago suffered from a chicken-and-egg problem: nobody traded because there was no liquidity, and there was no liquidity because nobody traded. CME will need committed market makers from day one. Their marketing already highlights the ability to trade nearly 24 hours a day and to take short positions without stock borrowing fees, which should appeal to a broad base of participants, but those features only matter if there is a market deep enough to trade in.
Broker adoption will determine whether the retail audience, the same audience that has driven the micro futures boom, can access these products. OneChicago was never widely available on retail platforms. If CME can ensure broad distribution through the broker community from the start, this launch has a much better shot at reaching the critical mass that eluded its predecessors.
Lastly, I encourage the CME to start small and add new contracts incrementally based on demand, as they are doing within the cryptocurrency product complex. Listing a future on every stock in the S&P 500 at launch will only impede market makers abilities to provide liquidity and confuse the retail client base these products are meant to serve. Start with the mag 7, or whatever they are called now, and include whatever stocks outside of those that have the highest intraday volatility.
In Summary
The history of single-stock futures in the US is a cautionary tale about what happens when regulatory politics get in the way of product innovation. For two decades, these products were banned outright. When they were finally allowed, they were saddled with margin requirements and compliance burdens that ensured they could never compete. OneChicago limped along for 19 years as proof of the problem, and NQLX didn’t even make it to its third birthday.
CME Group’s relaunch is better designed, better timed, and better positioned than anything that came before. Financial settlement, vertical integration, a potentially friendlier regulatory framework, and a retail audience that didn’t exist in 2002 all work in its favor. But the ghost of OneChicago should remind us that availability alone does not guarantee liquidity, and a good product can still fail if the economics don’t work for the participants who need to trade it.
We will be watching the margin framework and broker rollout closely this summer. If CME gets those two things right, single-stock futures may finally have their moment in the US. If not, this will be another chapter in the long and somewhat painful story of a product that was always better in theory than in practice.
[2] https://www.marketswiki.com/wiki/Shad-Johnson_Accord
[3]https://jakubrehor.com/posts/2021-06-22-end-of-single-stock-futures/
[4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_Futures_Modernization_Act_of_2000
[5] https://www.cftc.gov/IndustryOversight/ContractsProducts/SecurityFuturesProduct/sfpoverview.html
[6]https://www.marketswiki.com/wiki/Single_stock_futures
[7]https://www.marketswiki.com/wiki/OneChicago_LLC
[8]https://johnlothiannews.com/onechicago-to-close-on-september-18-for-trading-long-live-onechicago/
[10] https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020-264
[11] https://www.fia.org/fia/articles/fias-lukken-calls-new-era-sec-cftc-collaboration
[12]https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/peirce-joint-cftc-2020-10-22
[13] https://johnlothiannews.com/onechicago-to-close-on-september-18-for-trading-long-live-onechicago/
[14]https://financefeeds.com/cme-group-revives-us-single-stock-futures-after-five-year-gap/
[15]https://natlawreview.com/article/sec-cftc-2026-harmonization-mou
[16]https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/equities/single-stock-futures.html