Trading & Options · Profile from Trading and Options Research Companion
CME Group
The Chicago exchange group that turned a butter-and-egg market into the world's largest futures venue and the toll road on most of the leverage traded in US rates, equity indices, oil, gold and grains. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (the "Merc", 1898 as the Chicago Butter and Egg Board, renamed 1919) invented financial futures with currency contracts in 1972, launched S&P 500 futures in 1982, put them on screens with Globex (1992) and the E-mini S&P 500 (Sep 1997), demutualised and listed in 2002, bought the Chicago Board of Trade (closed 12 Jul 2007) and NYMEX/COMEX (~$9.5bn, closed 22 Aug 2008), and shrank its benchmark contract again with the Micro E-mini (6 May 2019, $5 × index) for retail traders. For a trader, CME matters less as a company than as a rulebook: its contract specifications, SPAN and SPAN 2 margin, price limits, settlement procedures and clearing house decide how leverage is granted and how losses are collected — as the May 2020 WTI contract showed when it settled at −$37.63 a barrel on 20 Apr 2020. Record 2025 ADV of 28.1m contracts and revenue of ~$6.5bn (CME release, 4 Feb 2026), then a record Q3 2026 ADV of 29.4m (CME, 21 Oct 2026). CME as a listed business — deals, governance, earnings — is told in Finance: CME Group; this profile takes the trading angle.
At a glance
- Founded
- Chicago Board of Trade 1848; Chicago Butter and Egg Board 1898, renamed Chicago Mercantile Exchange 1919; International Monetary Market 16 May 1972; CME Group formed by the CME–CBOT merger, 12 Jul 2007 (Finance profile)
- Headquarters
- 20 South Wacker Drive, Chicago
- Ownership / structure
- Public (Nasdaq: CME; NYSE-listed from Dec 2002, moved to Nasdaq 2008); Class B shares keep trading rights and board seats for former members (Finance profile)
- Leadership (2026)
- Terrence (Terry) Duffy, chairman and CEO (CEO since Nov 2016) (Finance profile)
- Exchanges and clearing
- Four CFTC-regulated designated contract markets — CME, CBOT, NYMEX, COMEX; CME Clearing, a derivatives clearing organization designated systemically important by FSOC in 2012; BrokerTec (cash Treasuries and repo), EBS (spot FX); CME Securities Clearing registered with the SEC 1 Dec 2025 (Finance profile)
- Products traders use
- SOFR and Treasury futures and options; E-mini and Micro E-mini S&P 500, Nasdaq-100, Russell 2000 and Dow futures and options on futures (with expiries every business day for E-mini S&P 500 options since 2022); NYMEX WTI and Henry Hub; COMEX gold, silver, copper; CBOT grains; FX futures; bitcoin, ether, SOL and XRP futures and options; event contracts
- Scale (dated)
- ADV a record 28.1m contracts in 2025; revenue ~$6.5bn (CME, 4 Feb 2026); Q3 2026 ADV a Q3-record 29.4m, open interest ~128m end-Sep 2026 (CME, 21 Oct 2026); Q3 2026 revenue ~$1.74bn, average rate per contract ~$0.679 (Finance profile)
- Regulators
- CFTC (exchanges and clearing house, under the Commodity Exchange Act); SEC for security futures and CME Securities Clearing; CME is itself a self-regulatory organization and the designated self-regulatory organization (DSRO) for many futures commission merchants
- Signature moves (incl. failures)
- Currency futures (1972); S&P 500 futures and the 1987 crash (1982–88); Globex and the E-mini (1992–97); the vertical silo — IPO, CBOT and NYMEX (2002–08); the Flash Crash and E-mini spoofing (2010–20); MF Global's customer-funds shortfall (2011); Micro E-mini (2019); negative WTI and the Bachelier switch (2020); daily options, event contracts and 24/7 crypto (2022–26)
9 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
1972
International Monetary Market Currency Futures
New product and market — the first financial futures
1982
SP 500 Futures and the 1987 Crash
New product (cash-settled stock-index futures), then crash response
1997
E mini SP 500 and Globex
Product design and technology bet — a smaller, electronically traded contract
2007
CBOT and NYMEX The Vertical Silo
Acquisitions — market structure (one owner, one clearing house for US futures benchmarks)
2010
Flash Crash E mini and Spoofing
Market event, then surveillance and enforcement response
2011
MF Global Customer Funds Shortfall
Clearing-member failure / frontline regulatory failure, then guarantee and rule changes
2019
Micro E mini and Retail Futures
Product design — a one-tenth-size contract aimed at individual traders
2020
Negative WTI and the Bachelier Switch
Market shock — clearing, systems and options-model change
2022
Daily Options Event Contracts and 24 7 Crypto
Product design and trading hours — short-dated options, small binary contracts, round-the-clock crypto