CME Group Inc. is a Chicago-based exchange holding company that operates the world's largest derivatives marketplace by contract volume and notional value. It runs four separate, CFTC-regulated exchanges, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and the Commodity Exchange (COMEX), listing futures and options across interest rates, equity indices, foreign exchange, energy, metals and agricultural commodities. Trading runs through CME Globex, its electronic order matching platform, with positions margined and settled through CME Clearing, the group's central counterparty clearing house. CME Group differentiates itself from other exchange operators by owning both the trading venue and the clearinghouse across its product range, and by combining exchange listed derivatives with cash and over the counter markets. Its 2018 acquisition of London's NEX Group added EBS, an electronic spot and forward FX trading venue, and BrokerTec, an electronic platform for US Treasury and European government bond trading, alongside the post trade services Traiana and TriOptima; these sit alongside the listed futures business rather than replacing it, giving the group a presence across futures, cash and OTC markets that few pure derivatives exchanges match. CME Group also holds a 27% stake in S&P Dow Jones Indices, the joint venture that licenses the S&P 500 and other benchmarks its own futures and options are written against. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange was founded in 1898; CME Group in its current form dates to the 2007 merger of CME and CBOT (founded 1848) in a deal reported at roughly 8 billion dollars, followed by the 2008 acquisition of NYMEX, and with it COMEX, for 8.9 billion dollars. CME, CBOT, NYMEX and COMEX each operate as separate CFTC registered Designated Contract Markets with self regulatory responsibilities. The company trades on Nasdaq under the ticker CME, reported 2025 revenue of 6.52 billion dollars, employed 3,875 people, and traded more than 7 billion futures and options contracts across its markets that year. Terrence A. Duffy has served as chairman and CEO; CME Group has announced his planned retirement from the CEO role in March 2027, with CFO Lynne Fitzpatrick named as his successor. 2026 has been a record year for trading activity at CME Group: it posted an all time record monthly average daily volume of 41.1 million contracts in March 2026 and a record quarterly average daily volume of 36.2 million contracts in the first quarter, with international average daily volume reaching a record 11.4 million contracts, up 30% year over year. In December 2025 the company also entered a new business line, forming FanDuel Prediction Markets Holdings LLC, in which CME Group holds a 51% equity interest, with FanDuel to launch FanDuel Predicts, a retail prediction markets app offering event contracts on financial benchmarks such as the S&P 500, Nasdaq-100, oil, gold and cryptocurrencies, on economic data releases such as GDP and CPI, and, in states where FanDuel does not offer sports betting, on sports and entertainment outcomes.
