Single-stock futures: Trading individual stocks without owning them

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Less money moving more stock.

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Shares of some of the world’s biggest companies—Amazon, Apple, NVIDIA, and others—are among the most actively traded investments in the world. Now there’s another way to trade their price movements without actually owning the shares. Single-stock futures, which returned to U.S. markets in 2026, combine the familiar exposure of individual stocks with the leverage and mechanics of a futures contract.

Single-stock futures have been tried before. Earlier U.S. efforts failed to gain traction, and there’s no guarantee this latest iteration will fare differently. They also join an ever-expanding, increasingly complex menu of digitally powered financial products at investors’ fingertips today, including perpetual futures, single-stock exchange-traded funds (ETFs), prediction markets, and options. Single-stock futures, however, present a unique hybrid of traditional equities and old-school commodity futures that might be of interest to some investors.

In July 2026, Chicago-based exchange operator CME Group launched single-stock futures contracts based on shares of several large U.S. companies. CME’s offerings include standard contracts representing 100 shares of the underlying company, as well as “micro” versions that are one-tenth the size and represent 10 shares. The contracts trade on CME’s Globex platform from Sunday evening through Friday afternoon, with a one-hour daily maintenance break.

In announcing the new contracts, CME emphasized the “flexibility” it believes today’s investors demand. The new contracts “will simplify access to the most liquid U.S. stocks and enable traders to easily transition between broad market index hedging and targeted single-name exposure,” CME executive Tim McCourt said in the statement.

Turf battles between two primary U.S. financial market regulators, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), have been common over the years (SEC’s purview includes stocks, while CFTC’s includes futures). That jurisdictional conflict helped lead to a ban on single-stock futures in 1982.

The ban was lifted in 2000 under the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Soon after, single-stock futures were launched in the U.S. by exchanges including OneChicago. But these initial efforts largely foundered, failing to establish sufficient trading interest or a deep retail market, in part due to competition from already-liquid options markets. New futures contracts often struggle to generate meaningful trading activity, and those that do succeed can take years to build a liquid market with abundant buyers and sellers. OneChicago shut down in 2020.

Single-stock futures function in similar ways to long-standing standardized futures based on crude oil, gold, or soybeans. Futures buyers and sellers enter binding agreements and are legally obligated to live up to the terms of the contract based on its specifications, or “specs.” These specs cover contract size, expiration dates, daily price limits, margin requirements, and more.

There are a few key differences. With commodity futures, a buyer of a corn contract could in theory hold the position until the contract expires and take “delivery” of 5,000 bushels of the grain (although actual delivery rarely happens in commodity futures; traders typically close out of a position before the delivery date). By contrast, CME’s single-stock futures follow a quarterly expiration cycle and are settled in cash based on the official closing price of the underlying stock. No physical shares change hands.

Single-stock futures can be traded with margin (“leverage”). Unlike stock margin, however, futures margin isn’t borrowed money. It’s a performance bond—typically a fraction of the contract’s underlying value—that a trader must maintain to hold the position. Because gains and losses are marked-to-market daily based on the contract’s full value, that relatively small margin deposit can amplify both gains and losses. If a position’s equity falls below the required maintenance margin, for example, it could trigger a margin call—a request from the broker to add funds or risk having the position liquidated.

What kind of margin do you need to trade single-stock futures? One example: For the standard version of a CME NVIDIA futures contract, maintenance margin was about $3,400 as of October 2026; for the micro version (contracts that are one-tenth the size of the standard contract), margin was around $340.

Proponents of single-stock futures point to a few features that may benefit investors:

Single-stock futures can be used to hedge an existing stock position or speculate on the direction of a stock’s price. Here are two simplified examples.

Suppose NVIDIA is trading at $200 per share, you think the price will rise, and you have $3,000 in trading capital to allocate. You could use the $3,000 to buy 15 shares of NVIDIA. Or, assuming a 15% initial margin requirement, you could post the same $3,000 as margin on one standard NVIDIA single-stock futures contract representing 100 shares, giving you exposure to $20,000 worth of NVIDIA stock.

If NVIDIA rises $10 per share and the futures contract rises by roughly the same amount, your futures position gains about $1,000. By comparison, your 15 shares would gain $150. But leverage works both ways. A 15% ($30) decline in NVIDIA would produce a loss of about $3,000 on the futures position—equal to your entire initial margin deposit—while your 15 shares would lose $450.

Suppose you own 100 shares of NVIDIA that have appreciated substantially. You remain bullish over the long term and don’t want to sell the shares, which could trigger a taxable capital gain, but you’re concerned about a short-term decline. With NVIDIA trading at $200, you could sell one NVIDIA single-stock futures contract. If NVIDIA subsequently falls $10 per share, the futures contract should also decline by roughly $10, allowing the $1,000 gain on your short futures position to essentially offset (“hedge,” in trader lingo) the $1,000 decline in the value of your shares.

Single-stock futures join an increasingly crowded market of electronically traded financial products. But a futures position isn’t the same as an investment in the underlying company. You don’t own shares, receive dividends, or have shareholder voting rights. And because futures contracts have expiration dates and gains and losses are magnified by the use of margin, they’re generally better suited to shorter-term trading and hedging than traditional buy-and-hold investing.

If you’re considering single-stock futures, understand what you’re getting: price exposure to an individual stock through a futures contract, with the potential for gains or losses magnified by leverage. For a longer-term stake in a company—including the rights and potential income that come with ownership—buying the stock itself serves a different purpose.

This article is intended for educational purposes only and not as an endorsement of a particular financial strategy, company, or fund. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., does not provide legal, tax, or investment advice.