CME Posts Record Q3 Revenue on Extra Trading Days, Flat Rate per Contract

CME Group booked its highest third-quarter revenue on record while the average rate it earned per futures and options contract moved by exactly one-tenth of a cent, from $0.678 to $0.679. The record was not driven by pricing power or by the batch of new contracts launched late in the quarter. It was driven, in large part, by the calendar and by market-data sales.

Why did revenue rise while daily volume fell?

Average daily volume (ADV, the number of contracts traded per session) declined from Q2 to Q3, but the quarter contained 64 trading days — two more than Q2. More days multiplied fewer contracts per day into a larger quarterly total.

Based on CME's reported ADV, approximately 1.88 billion futures and options contracts traded during Q3, up from around 1.85 billion in the previous quarter. Clearing and transaction fees, CME's main revenue source, rose nearly 2% to $1.38 billion, close to the estimated increase in contracts traded. The fee figure also includes cash-market activity through the EBS foreign-exchange platform and the BrokerTec fixed-income platform, so it is not directly interchangeable with contract volume.

The per-contract rate remained below the $0.702 reported in Q3 2025, meaning a higher average rate did not materially drive the sequential increase. CME attributed the small rise from Q2 to changes in volume-based discounts and a lower proportion of micro contracts.

What shifted inside the volume mix?

The product mix changed even though the overall rate held nearly flat:

• Interest-rate ADV rose from 14.5 million to 15.1 million contracts per day.
• Equity-index ADV declined from 8.6 million to 7.7 million.
• Foreign exchange, energy, agriculture and metals volumes were broadly stable or slightly lower.

Beyond transaction fees, revenue from data and information services rose by $5 million from Q2 to a record $243 million — 20% above Q3 2025. For desks tracking exchange economics, the quarter's growth came from more days and stronger data sales, not from the new listings.

Which products arrived, and what has been measured?

CME launched several contracts during the quarter, extending its range from smaller positions aimed at retail traders to new institutional tools for trading credit exposure:

• On August 24, the exchange introduced E-nano futures on four US equity indices. At one-tenth the size of Micro E-minis, they cut the minimum exposure needed to trade the S&P 500, Nasdaq-100, Russell 2000 and Dow Jones benchmarks.
• On September 14, CME began trading futures linked to the S&P UBS USD Liquid Leveraged Loan Index, giving institutions an exchange-traded route to leveraged-loan exposure with potential margin offsets against other positions cleared at CME. The contract joins a credit futures suite where open interest exceeded $2 billion in September.
• Beyond listings, CME plans to begin clearing cash Treasury transactions and repos on December 7, expanding its post-trade business ahead of the SEC's central-clearing mandate.

What is mandated by disclosure and what is asserted without measurement must be kept separate here: most of the new contracts arrived late in Q3, and CME has not disclosed their revenue contribution. Their commercial traction remains unmeasured.

What changes in Q4?

Transaction-fee changes took effect on October 1. CME estimates they would add 0.5% to 1% to clearing and transaction fees on a full-year basis at similar activity levels, according to the exchange's earnings commentary. That is an estimate, not a reported figure, and it rests on an assumption of unchanged activity.

The effect will first appear in Q4 results, giving execution desks another variable to weigh alongside trading volume and the number of trading days — with the December 7 Treasury-clearing launch setting up the next test of whether post-trade expansion can add a measured revenue line.