CFTC clears perpetual futures on US stocks for the first time
Why it matters
The CFTC has cleared perpetual futures on single stocks, a crypto-style contract with no expiry date, for US exchanges. Brokers and funds get a regulated onshore venue, overseen by both the CFTC and SEC.
The short version
On 3 November, CFTC chairman Michael Selig said perpetual futures on individual stocks can trade on CFTC-registered US exchanges for the first time. The contracts have no expiry date and count as security futures, so the CFTC and the SEC will oversee them together. No exchange or launch stocks were named.
Here's what happened. On Tuesday, Michael Selig, chairman of the CFTC (the US derivatives regulator), said perpetual futures on single stocks can now trade on registered US exchanges. These are futures with no end date, a format that grew up on crypto exchanges.
The format is already huge in crypto. Perpetual futures traded more than $630bn in the past month, according to DeFiLlama data cited by CoinDesk.
Selig's statement says the contracts count as security futures under a 2000 law, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. So both the CFTC and the SEC oversee them, and only exchanges registered with both agencies can list them. The two regulators signed a cooperation agreement in March.
Selig pitched the move as a regulated alternative to offshore venues, many of them unregulated. His statement did not name which exchanges will offer the contracts or which stocks come first.
Put it in context. In May, the CFTC approved the first US bitcoin perpetual future, Kalshi's BTCPERP contract. Now the same structure moves into equities.
For you, the open questions are practical: who lists first, and how brokers decide which clients can trade them.
Where this comes from
Written with AI from the sources above and checked against them before publishing. Here's how we work. This is news, not financial advice. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.