The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has cleared perpetual futures on individual US stocks for trading on US regulated exchanges, Chairman Michael S. Selig announced on 3 November 2026.
The contracts, which Selig brands Equity Perps, fall within the joint security-futures regime and are treated as approved by default under Regulation 40.3, in a statement published on the CFTC’s site. They may list on exchanges holding a designated contract market registration with the CFTC that are also registered with the SEC as national securities exchanges under the notice-registration framework.
In the statement, Selig said: “This expansion marks a significant step towards allowing U.S. market participants, consistent with applicable law, to avail themselves of the advantages of perpetual futures.”
A joint framework two decades in the making
The legal route runs through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which created a joint CFTC-SEC regime for security futures products, and a memorandum of understanding the two agencies signed on 11 March 2026 to coordinate rulemaking and enforcement. Selig said differences between the agencies’ approaches had left security futures and equity perpetual futures without a clear path to market, and that coordination has since improved.
It is also an extension of the CFTC’s 29 May approval of the first US-listed bitcoin perpetual, Kalshi’s BTCPERP, which Selig described as a move beyond digital commodities and into traditional securities. The same day, CFTC staff granted no-action relief letting Coinbase Financial Markets route US clients into offshore perp liquidity, part of a wider push to bring perpetual futures onshore.
The move sits alongside the voluntary federal registration path Selig has proposed for crypto exchanges, which he has said the CFTC cannot make mandatory without Congress. That framework, set out in an advance notice of rulemaking in October, covers CFTC oversight of crypto exchanges with cybersecurity, proof-of-reserves and custody requirements.
Contested ground
The wider perps framework is not settled law. CME Group sued the CFTC in June over the Kalshi bitcoin approval, its case resting on the claim that funding payments exchanged between counterparties make the product a Dodd-Frank swap, not a future; the dispute is still before the courts. Selig’s own rationale for the equity extension is onshoring: he argued US traders should not have to rely on offshore and potentially unregulated platforms for instruments used in risk management and price discovery.
For traders who run perp positions on offshore crypto venues, the decision signals that a domestically regulated equivalent is coming for single stocks, though the statement stops short of naming a venue, listing contracts or giving a timeline: the designated contract markets are the ones that would put contracts forward, and none has yet.
Share
Saqib Iqbal
