The central engineering problem in single-stock futures is settlement. Physical delivery requires the short side to locate and deliver actual shares, which creates borrowing friction and custody overhead that has historically narrowed participation; cash settlement removes the delivery requirement but substitutes a new dependency: a reference price the market will accept as fair. CME Group built its new product on that framework, listing cash-settled single-stock futures on 55 U.S. equities on Monday, with micro-sized contracts on 22 of those names available to trade 23 hours a day.
Cash settlement and what it enables
In a cash-settled contract, neither the buyer nor the seller ever touches the underlying shares. At expiration, the contract calculates the difference between the agreed price and the reference price for that equity, and the net amount moves in cash. The structure keeps the contract functional even when physical settlement would be difficult or expensive.
SpaceX is named among the 55 equities on CME's launch list. SpaceX does not trade on a public exchange; shares change hands only through secondary market transactions, which are infrequent and opaque. A cash-settled futures contract creates centralized, continuous price discovery on an asset that otherwise lacks it, without requiring participants to locate or deliver actual SpaceX shares.
Micron Technology is also listed. For Micron, the cash-settled structure is less about access and more about timing: the futures contract lets participants express views or manage exposure at hours when the equity market is closed.
The 23-hour trading window
U.S. equity exchanges operate on a standard daily session. Significant price-moving events, whether an earnings report from overseas or a macro development in another time zone, routinely arrive outside those hours. Futures markets are built to absorb that flow.
CME's contracts trade 23 hours a day, giving participants in European and Asian sessions a listed instrument to manage single-name U.S. equity exposure in real time rather than waiting for the domestic session to open.
Micro-sized contracts are available on 22 of the 55 names at launch.