CFTC Clears Stock Perpetual Futures for U.S. Exchanges

By Daniel Okafor

The CFTC said Tuesday that stock-linked perpetual futures can begin trading on registered U.S. exchanges, the first approval of an expiration-free, leveraged contract for individual equities.

What changed on Tuesday?

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission approved “equity perpetual futures,” contracts that track an individual stock’s price without an expiration date. Traders can hold leveraged positions indefinitely as long as they meet margin and funding requirements.

Without a fixed maturity, the holding period depends on the trader’s position rather than a contract date. Margin and funding therefore remain the continuing constraints on carrying leveraged exposure.

Until the announcement, U.S. traders had largely lacked access to instruments of this kind. The approval gives CFTC-registered exchanges permission to offer a product long familiar in crypto, while providing a regulated alternative to offshore venues.

Why is Selig bringing perps onshore?

CFTC Chairman Michael Selig tied the decision to a campaign to bring perpetual products onshore.

Selig said: “In my inaugural remarks, I directed the CFTC to use the tools at its disposal to onshore perpetual derivative products so that they can flourish in the United States, subject to appropriate safeguards.”

He called the stock contracts an extension of the agency’s earlier approval of the first true Bitcoin perpetual futures on a regulated U.S. exchange. That earlier action had cleared Bitcoin perpetual futures for Kalshi earlier this year.

Selig said: “Bringing these products into regulated markets ensures that American investors and traders can access these products within the protections of the CFTC’s proven regulatory framework.” He said this keeps traders from being “forced to turn to offshore, and often unregulated, venues.”

Last week, Selig used the record Binance hack to argue that offshore exchanges need U.S. oversight.

What changes in supervision?

The CFTC approved the equity perps as security futures products under the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. That classification places them under joint oversight by the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Selig credited the agencies’ March memorandum of understanding with ending the jurisdictional limbo that SEC Chairman Paul Atkins had described as a regulatory no man’s land. For exchanges, the practical result is a defined U.S. route for listing a stock-referenced perpetual under a joint framework.

Who is moving toward onshore perps?

• The CFTC has floated plans to bring crypto exchanges under federal oversight.
• The agency said it had dismissed a CME lawsuit challenging crypto perpetual futures.
• The CFTC also cleared the way for Coinbase, which recently filed to list single-stock perps tied to names including Apple, Tesla and Nvidia.

Selig’s stated policy objective is to build the next phase of financial markets in the United States. The stock-perpetual clearance is the most immediate change for U.S. market infrastructure because it expands the product set available to registered exchanges while placing those products inside an established federal framework.

The next phase is operational: registered exchanges can move from approval to listings under the March CFTC-SEC framework, with margin, funding and the agencies’ safeguards governing continuous trading.