CME Group has traded more than 350,000 single-stock futures contracts since launching them about two months ago, Tim McCourt, Senior Managing Director at CME Group, told the Animal Spirits Podcast.
US stock exchanges plan to move to trading 23 hours a day, five days a week, later this year. CME's futures markets already keep those hours, and Tim's new contracts bring them to individual stocks.
"The futures industry at CME Group, we've been 23/5 for decades... now availing that to single-stock futures."
Tim spoke for the exchange that designed and lists the contracts, with its first two months of trading data in hand.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 29 minutes of audio, 8 minutes of reading.
Here are the 9 insights that matter.
Animal Spirits Podcast · Oct 24, 2026 · 29m · 21m saved
With Tim McCourt, Senior Managing Director at CME Group
Key Takeaways
More than half of the S&P 500 sits in its top 10 names, which is why CME now offers futures on single stocks
The contracts settle in cash, so no shares are ever delivered
Initial margin of about 15–20% gives 5–6x the exposure for the capital put up, against roughly 2:1 for stock bought on margin
A long future carries the full downside, unlike a long option, where the most a buyer can lose is the premium
Shorting a single-stock future needs no locate, no borrow and no short-sale price test
That makes it a cheaper hedge for an options book than shorting the shares
Futures prices have no implied-volatility component: the price is spot plus interest to expiration, minus dividends
More than 350,000 contracts, worth about $3–3.5B, traded in the first 2 months
The first contract ever to trade was Adobe, not a Magnificent 7 stock
1. Top 10 Stocks, Half the S&P
Michael Batnick, who writes The Irrelevant Investor, opened by noting that CME Group is not where most people picture retail investors trading.
CME is better known as an institutional venue than a retail one
"You wouldn't think about the CME group as a place for retail investors to trade. You'd think of it more as an institutionalized platform." — Michael Batnick
Tim said the market has changed around the exchange. Individual investors now trade options, exchange-traded funds and single stocks far more than before, and retail is a much larger share of daily volume than the roughly 10% it used to be.
The concentration of the S&P 500 makes single-stock risk harder to manage with index futures alone
"More than half of the S&P 500 is made up of the top 10 names." — Tim McCourt
CME's traditional strength is futures on broad indexes such as the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq. Michael added his own figure: the top five S&P 500 stocks are now worth as much as the bottom 434 combined, which he called "unbelievable."
