There’s a difference between reading a press release and understanding what a new product does to your risk, your taxes, and your strategy. On July 27, 2026 CME launched single stock futures, and most of what’s already circulating online falls into one of two camps: fact sheets or hype about leverage. Neither tells you what you actually need to know before you consider whether or not you want to start trading single stock futures. So that’s what I'm going to focus on in this overview.
A quick note before we get into it: this launch is still pending final regulatory review as we publish this. The contract count, the names on the list, and SpaceX’s inclusion are all confirmed by CME’s own press release and clearing notice, but keep that caveat in mind. We’ll update this if anything changes.
The Quick Version
CME launched single stock futures on 55 names as standard contracts, each covering 100 shares, plus 22 micro contracts covering 10 shares each. The list pulls from mega-caps across the S&P 500, Nasdaq-100, and Russell 1000: Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Micron, and around 50 others. SpaceX is on it too, trading as $SPCX.
The pitch is real: close to 23-hour access, leverage up to roughly 6x, easy shorting with no borrow fees, and cash settlement instead of taking delivery of shares. The risks are just as real. And there’s a tax detail I’m not seeing very many talking about.
What Are Single Stock Futures?
A single stock future settles in cash, not shares. When the contract expires, you don’t end up holding 100 shares of Nvidia. It just settles to the stock’s closing price on expiration day. That’s a meaningful change from the older version of this product, which was physically delivered and required you to actually take the stock.
The price of the future tracks the stock price, adjusted for cost of carry and expected dividends. Cost of carry is just the expense of holding a position over time, mostly interest. Dividends get baked into the futures price up front, so unlike owning the stock, you won’t collect a dividend check as a futures holder.
The Specs, Straight From CME
A few numbers worth knowing before you look at a chart:
Contract size: 100 shares for standard contracts, 10 shares for micro. A $200 stock means $20,000 of notional on one standard contract.
Tick size: $0.01, worth $1 per tick on standard contracts and $0.10 on micro.
Settlement: Cash, based on the underlying’s official close. Trading stops at 3pm CT on the third Friday of the contract month, with quarterly expirations (March, June, September, December).
Hours: Close to 23 hours a day, Sunday evening through Friday afternoon on Globex, with a one-hour maintenance break daily.
Margin: 15% of notional at minimum, set by regulators. That’s where the “up to 6x leverage” number comes from, and it can change.
Circuit breakers: No daily price limit, but market-wide circuit breakers apply. If the S&P trips a 7%, 13%, or 20% halt, everything stops. A regulatory halt on the underlying stock halts the future too. You can get frozen in a position.
Who’s Actually on the List
The full roster reads like a mega-cap index: AbbVie, Adobe, AMD, Alphabet, Amgen, Apple, Applied Materials, Bank of America, Berkshire Hathaway, Boeing, Booking, Broadcom, Caterpillar, Chevron, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Comcast, ConocoPhillips, Costco, Eli Lilly, Exxon, Home Depot, Intel, IBM, J&J, JPMorgan, Lockheed, Mastercard, McDonald’s, Merck, Meta, Micron, Microsoft, Netflix, Newmont, Nvidia, Oracle, Palantir, Palo Alto, PepsiCo, Pfizer, P&G, Prologis, Qualcomm, Salesforce, Starbucks, Tesla, Texas Instruments, UnitedHealth, Verizon, Visa, Walmart, Disney, plus SpaceX.
The 22 micro contracts are simply the highest-demand names from this same list, not a separate roster.
SpaceX deserves its own mention. It just completed the largest IPO in history, priced at $135 on June 12 and raising around $75 billion, now trading as $SPCX at a valuation estimated between $1.75 and $1.8 trillion. It’s been extremely volatile since debut. Being able to short SpaceX futures nearly around the clock is already the single biggest curiosity driver of this whole launch.
How This Is Different From Buying the Stock
The main pitch is capital efficiency. Buying 100 shares of a $200 stock costs you $20,000 outright. Controlling the same exposure through one future costs about $3,000 in margin, per CME’s own example, freeing up the rest of your capital for other positions.
Shorting is the other half of the pitch. There’s no locate requirement, no borrow fee, and no short-sale restrictions. A short position works exactly like a long one.
The Tax Thing Almost Nobody Is Talking About
This is the part I think deserves more attention than it’s getting.
Single stock futures are not Section 1256 contracts. That means they don’t get the 60/40 blended tax treatment that index futures like the E-mini get. The tax code specifically excludes securities futures contracts from Section 1256 unless you’re a dealer, which most retail traders aren’t. A short position is always treated as short-term, no matter how long you hold it.
In plain terms: day trading a single stock future gets taxed like day trading the stock itself, at ordinary short-term rates up to 37%, not the roughly 26.8% blended rate a lot of people assume futures get. If you assume “it’s a future, so it must get the 60/40 treatment,” you’d be wrong, and it’s a costly assumption to get wrong. This isn’t tax advice. Talk to a professional about your specific situation.
How Traders Might Actually Use These
This is not trading or financial advice. These are just a few use cases that are already taking shape:
Directional single-name trades with leverage, long or short, nearly around the clock.
Hedging a concentrated position without selling the underlying stock.
Index-versus-single-name spreads, which CME is openly marketing. Think long an Nvidia future against a short Nasdaq position, betting Nvidia outperforms the index.
Pairs and sector trades, like long AMD against short Nvidia for a market-neutral view.
Event trades around earnings or overnight news that the cash market can’t react to yet.
The Risks to Trading Single Stock Futures
The earnings gap is a big one. A 15% margin cushion can get wiped out by a 20% earnings gap, and because these trade nearly 23 hours a day, that gap can hit your account directly overnight with no chance to get out. Losses can run past your margin.
Liquidity is uneven. The marquee names will likely trade well. Smaller names on the list might not, especially in the overnight hours, which means wider spreads early on.
Concentration and volatility compound each other. A single stock can swing far more than an index, and leverage magnifies that in both directions.
Corporate actions, like stock splits, special dividends, and mergers, can change your contract terms without warning.
And the tax gotcha above is a real risk in the sense that traders could plan around the wrong number if they’re not careful.
Why This Time Might Actually Be Different
This isn’t a debut. Single stock futures already existed in the U.S. once. A venue called OneChicago ran them from 2002 until 2020. They were physically settled, margined higher, and never built real liquidity because the options and stock-loan businesses that would have competed with them protected their own turf, and rates were low enough that the financing edge barely mattered. OneChicago quietly shut down in September 2020.
They’ve thrived overseas the whole time, though. Eurex lists something close to 900 of them, and India and South Africa both run large single stock futures markets.
What might make 2026 different: CME’s scale and distribution, cash settlement instead of the old physical delivery model, the retail futures boom of the last few years, an openly marketed index-spread angle, and higher rates that bring back the financing math that never mattered when rates were near zero. But this is just my opinion, not a sure thing.
Where This Leaves You
Single stock futures give traders a new way to get leveraged, cash-settled exposure to individual names, with real capital efficiency and easy shorting. They also come with real risk, an unusual tax treatment, and a launch that’s still pending final sign-off. Read the specs, understand the tax situation before you trade a single contract, and size your positions like someone who’s read this far and actually cares about the outcome.
That’s the whole idea behind trading with funded capital in the first place: you get the exposure and the upside without putting your own account on the line for every new product that comes to market. If you’re already thinking about how to trade instruments like this without risking your own capital, that’s exactly what a TakeProfitTrader evaluation is built for. Start your evaluation and see what funded futures trading actually looks like.
Ready to Get Funded?
Reading about trading is one thing. Doing it is another. Take Profit Trader gives traders a clear way to prove their skills with an evaluation. Then once passed move into a funded PROP account and earn an 80% profit split with day-one and daily payouts. See what a funded account can offer.
Disclaimer: This article is for information purposes only, and should not be construed as legal, investment, financial, or other advice. All investments involve a degree of risk, including the risk of loss. Futures, foreign currency and options trading contains substantial risk and is not for every investor