Welcome to the CME Group Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. At this time, I would like to inform all participants that your lines have been placed on a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer session of today's conference. I will now turn the call over to Adam Minnick. Please go ahead.

Adam Minnick Good morning, and I hope you're all doing well today. Commentary, which provides extensive details on the second quarter of 2026, which we will be discussing on this call, language, and then I'll turn it over to Terry. Statements made on this call and in the other reference documents on our website that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance. They involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefore actually from what is expressed or implied in a statement. Detailed information about performance can be found in the filings with the SEC. Lastly, in the earnings release you will see a reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP measures following the financial statements. With that, I'll turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Terry Duffy.

Thank you, Adam, and thank you all for joining us this morning. I'll make a few comments about our strong quarter, and then before I turn it over to Lynn to provide an overview of our financial results. In addition to Lynn, we have other members of our management team present to answer questions after the prepared remarks. The second quarter averaged daily volume of 29.8 million contracts represented the second highest Q2 in our history. It was within 1% of our record second quarter a year ago, with May and June particularly strong following the tough April comparison. It's ended the quarter up 8% over the past year and up 16% since the beginning of this year. Additionally, we delivered a record level of capital efficiencies, saving our customers an average of over $95 billion in margin per Recently, this strong business performance has been overshadowed by discussions surrounding perpetual futures. While this product may be dubbed futures, they function much more like leveraged spot retail traders seeking high leverage but they are not appropriate for the institutional risk managers who comprise the vast majority of our business highly engineered instant frequent funding rate adjustments that revert the position back to the spot they are known for high leverage and automated liquidations they We offer limited investor protections and introduce heightened market risk, particularly for retail participants. Next, do not appeal to our core customers. Of 2026, 94% of our volume originated from institutional customers. Perpetual futures are in no way substitutes for the institutional hedging tools that these customers rely on. Perpetuals do not provide price or time certainty to necessary components for hedging exposures. When taking into account both of the transaction fee and the daily funding cost, the total cost to trade perpetual futures is typically orders of magnitude more expensive than our highly efficient futures contracts. technical and operational capabilities to launch perpetual futures. In fact, we have contract specifications and are prepared to bring these products to market should evolving demand or structural shifts make it appropriate to do so. However, we have not heard demand from our customers for these products. crypto perpetuals are not new and existed before we even launched our crypto futures complex in 2017 we have built that business over the past last nine years because our futures fill a market need that was not met by traditional crypto products including perpetuals our crypto futures volume is up over seven-fold in the past three years despite the existence of deeply committed to ensuring market integrity and will never sacrifice core protections in the name of innovation instead we continue to launch innovative products while preserving the safety and soundness of our marketplace in the second quarter we successfully introduced 24 7 trading of crypto futures and this weekend we are launching 24-7 trading of our one-ounce gold contract. Next week, we will be launching single stock futures, which will simplify directional trading with exceptional capital efficiency. In the fourth quarter, we plan to launch Treasury Link to link our U.S. Treasury futures and cash Treasury liquidity pools. We're also partnering with Silicon Data to launch a pioneering compute futures market later this year. We expect our innovative new offerings to further accelerate our growth as we build on our record-breaking performance in the first half of 2026. Our robust, ongoing investments in our technology evolution position us well to drive continued value for both our financials, and I look forward to your questions.

Financial results in the effect of over $1.7 billion was up 1% from the second quarter in 2025. This marks the record for second quarter Q1 of this year, 7.8 cents, that's $2.6.1 billion and $2.99 per share, 1 percent higher than Q2 2025. This represents an adjusted net income margin for the quarter of 63.4 percent. We returned $1.2 billion to shareholders during the quarter with $468 million in regular quarterly dividends and $695 million in shares repurchased. CME Group continued to build on its record 2025 performance through the first half. Volume through the first half was 10 percent ahead of last year, with open interest growing 8 percent. Revenue increased 8 percent, and we set new records for our large open interest holders in interest rates, equity index, and with July to date tracking 18 percent ahead of last year. Our strong financial performance this year reflects CME Group's established role as the world's premier risk management destination. In times of uncertainty, our robust market infrastructure and deep liquidity continues to evolve, we remain committed to driving innovation and delivering the capital efficiencies our clients rely on. With continued strong demand for our risk management products, we look forward to continuing this momentum in the second half. We'd now like to open up the call for your questions. Thank you.

The phone lines are now open for questions. If you would like to ask a question over the phone, please press star 1 and record your name. To withdraw your question, press star 2. The first question in the queue is from Dan Fannin with Jeffries. Your line is open.

Thanks. Terry, I was hoping you could expand upon your comments on Perpetuals. Clearly, the market is focused on this topic. Can you expand upon what you're hearing from customers, if anything, around the potential innovation that might be coming from Perpetuals?

Yeah, Dan, that's a great question. I've spent a lot of time over the last several weeks going through each and every one of our asset classes talking to the highest levels of those institutions who participate in our business one of the great benefits of being in my role for the last 30 years is I've helped a lot of good relationships and they put me in the right direction with the participants so I'll give you an example the largest second largest energy participant in the world of commercial participation so there's been a lot of talk about oil as it relates to perps and other and of course it's in the headlines today as it relates to the Iranian war I have had conversations with the CEO of this firm and his derivative participants from different parts of the world and they reassured me 19 times I asked them if they wanted me to list this product they do not want this product they do not know how they would possibly risk manage the exposures that they have on their books on it with a perpetual contract it does not work for them they made it quite clear to me that this product that we have today and other energy products that are available to them, whether it's at ICE or somewhere else, are critically important to what they do to manage their business. So that is one example. And I've also done the same thing as it relates to our other products such as rates and equities and have had very similar conversations. So when these products have end dates associated with them on the cash market side and you have a product, as I said in my opening comments, that trade around a leveraged spot, absolutely nothing for them in order to risk manage their product. Now, it might do something for the retail participant who wants to just trade back, but it does nothing for the 94% of the business that I outlined earlier in my comments. Colin knows me. I'm a pretty forward straight shooter, and I even mentioned that in my opening comments, if I thought we needed to list these, we would do so. And I said that we were prepared to do it if we needed to do it. But that's not what we are hearing about the names that I use. But I will tell you that these are significant.

Question is from Alex Cram with UBS. Your line is open.

Yes, hey, good morning, everyone. I guess I'll stay on the same topic, even though you brought it up twice already, Terry, that if there's demand, you would meet it. So maybe just talk a little bit more philosophical why on the retail side you don't think there's demand yet because clearly you've been expanding into retail aggressively. And I know that's not your core market, but it's been a nice growth area. And clearly it seems like there is interest from retail. So just maybe can you give us some more detail what the retail participation is saying and why you're not ready or why you're not willing to do this right now and what really has to change for you to expand there on the retail side?

I'm going to ask, so the comparison, Alex, and thank you for the question, the comparison for the retail right now in the United States would be the crypto franchise because that's the only other perps that are out there competing with our products today. So Tim's going to walk through some of the statistics around what the retail is doing in that particular asset class. But I want to make a point, and I think this is really important as it relates to perpetuals. I want to ask anybody, or it's a rhetorical question, how many people have been talking about the funding rate and the cost of the funding rate as it relates to a perpetual? And how many people have been talking about the auto liquidation risk management model on the back end of the market? The answer to that, because it was rhetorical, is zero. The only thing they're talking about, about a perpetual, is there is no expiration date associated with it. I will tell you that we are not seeing anybody, nor do we hardly ever see anybody in the retail division to go to an expiration. So that is not the issue. And then I have clearly outlined, if they did, the cost associated with going to roll the product versus paying the funding rate to trade the product, which is seven-fold higher than CME's execution cost, would way overshadow the cost that it would be to roll your position. So that demand is still not there. But just to reinforce that, I'm going to ask Tim to walk through on that side because that's what we've seen to date that's been approved. Tim? Big business since we've been in it. Some of the numbers between $170 million, between $9 and $10 billion versus $10 of serving this community, all the community and crypto. Thanks, Jim. Lynn, you want to ask?

Yes, we continue to innovate customer ability and product.

Tell her about what we are really seeing versus what is being written upon or potentially propaganda coming out of other entities or what they may or may not be doing.

Very good. Thank you. Thank you.

The next question is from Chris Allen with KBW. Lawn is open.

Yeah, morning, everyone. Thanks for the question. Maybe if we could switch gears a little bit and talk about compute futures. Seems like a really interesting product opportunity. I wonder if you could give us any color on customer demand here, and how do you think CME's product construction will be differentiated versus other competing launches?

You know, that's a great question, Chris, and thank you for that. But when this was originally introduced, I found it fascinating that this market was really underserved as far as a risk management, not only data centers, but just compute in general. And working with some of our, and this is the beauty of the business partners and working together to bring product and participants. So compute futures, you know, whether you're a believer in it, some things have just become, I think this might be one of those scenarios. because the artificial intelligence serves so many different industries outside of finance and the benefits it could derive. So some of these computer volatility that can be inherent in them, the multiples they trade at, so I think this will give them a massive, you know, risk management tool to use going forward. And I am really excited by the – I think this is another innovative world that continues to evolve. We're reintroducing single stock futures, as we said in earlier comments. I'm probably the only one that's old enough to remember that when we first introduced them the first time, they failed miserably. Sometimes timing is really important when you list products. And I will say timing is massively, just as I do with single stock futures as well. So I'm going to ask Derek Salmon, who kind of just falls under his line a little bit, and ask him to make a comment as well. Derek?

Yeah, I think as Terry and Lynn both mentioned, you know, we continue to innovate products based on client demand and client need, and those continue to evolve every single day, despite the headlines of what the flavor of the month is in retail. When we look at the compute future specifically, there is certainly an unmet need in the world in which we operate, where data centers are front and center of driving economic growth and AIs in the middle of every time. We are going to be the first daily benchmark tracking to spot hourly rental costs at NVIDIA, each 100 GPUs. And what that means is the agency is very rental indices. And what this means is around the input commerce and management is looking to get exposure to. This actually sits well inside our commodities portfolio. Because if you think about what this allows us to do, this allows customers to effectively hedge a data evasion that continues to expand.

And hopefully that gives you a little bit of, or Chris, a little bit of color on the compute futures.

Thanks. Thank you, buddy.

The next question, the Q, is from Ken Worthington with J.P. Morgan. Your line is open.

Good morning, and thanks for taking the question. So Trump has launched Project Vault in minerals and metals with copper, silver, aluminum, lithium, and some others on the list. Are there positive implications for COMEX from Project Vault or other Trump metals and mineral initiatives?

Thanks, Ken. Appreciate the question. Derek, do you want to address that?

Yeah, and I can appreciate the question. There's certainly a lot of discussion around what it means for reinforcing U.S. fiscal supply chains. I think, let me take a step back, in the market alongside a lot of other growth runs in our metals business, in our metals business, forcing U.S. supply chains. And that means it's reinforcing the value of U.S. what CB Group is all about, whether it's our copper business, whether it's our battery metals business, where we are the single largest venue for risk management and prices governing battery metals. This is contributing all to the focus on U.S. benchmarks, the products we run. And if you follow that value, what's happening? We see our copper volumes up 4% this year. We see record amounts of physical copper, 100,000 short tons of copper in U.S. warehouses directly responding to the focus on U.S. supply chains and on-shoring the ability for customers and U.S. infrastructure to enable access to this critical mineralism battery metal. That is exactly the business that we are in the middle of. We are the number one exchange for battery metals globally, and this is bringing new interest into commercials, which is the original driver for our entry into the, we're seeing record open interest in our steel complex right now. We're focused on U.S. supply. I think we're well positioned for this. We continue to innovate in this space, and as I mentioned before, we continue to respond to customer need. We'll continue to grow this business.

The next question in the queue is from Patrick Molley with Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. So, Terry, earlier this month the CFTC stayed your 24-7 crude oil contract the day before launch while the 24-7 gold contract went forward. And Chairman Selig was fairly pointed about the self-certification timing. So what do you make of the commission drawing a line between those two products? And do you see any read-through there on how they're maybe approaching the perpetual futures question and allowing 24-7 trading in those products potentially?

Yeah, thanks, Patrick. I appreciate the question. And I think that when you look at the stay on our 40.2, as Patrick was referring to, there's two ways to certify contracts. 40.2 is self-certification, 40.3 is a full review. We actually filed both, as everybody may know. But the contract we filed was not novel or complex. It was an existing contract, just with a smaller size to it. So we felt, you know, we announced the date, the 40.2 was the right approach for us to do, which by law we have the ability to file either one we're not compared i guess want to get into too much of the idiosyncrasies of some of the products they have not stayed but it is kind of interesting how some of the 40.2 filings that have gone through the agency and i guess i can go through an example of the ridiculous and that they did not stay concerning about you know readily manipulable, susceptible to manipulation, or complex as it relates to, as I said earlier in my comments, some of the largest producers in the commercial side of the energy, they understood what we were trying to effectuate. We have 24-7 oil being traded today by entities that are supposedly not allowed to have U.S. participants into it, but yet we've yet to see how the federal government is policing U.S. participants from not participating in these 24-7 markets or how they're not having an influence on the weekends. Certain markets, I'm not suggesting they are, but how they're not. Prediction markets that have prices of oil that trade 24-7. Certain other contracts that take priority, you know, when you're in the hot dog business. So I'm trying to point out to run contracts here that are meaningful, held up for the world, how they are policing U.S. participants from not participating in 24-7 oil today or how they can square up that predictions on oil prices for down the road that trade 24-7 are any different. So a little surprised by it.

All right, very helpful callers.

Next question, the Q is from Brian Bedell with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Great, thanks. Good morning, folks. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe just to switch back to perpetuals and really focusing on the retail side and maybe a futuristic scenario, and that would be, you know, Terry, what would your view be on any potential down the road CFTC approval of equity perps, particularly S&P? What kind of process do you think that ought to go through, given, you know, that market is multiple, many multiples the size of the crypto market and, you know, could have systemic issues? So if you could talk about that. And then, you know, if you were to launch those, I would assume they would not be risk margined with your, you know, with your existing clearinghouse. They would be separate. So, I mean, could you theoretically launch those for retail at lower leverage? And, you know, would you view yourself as having the exclusive right to the S&P license in a PERP future? I shouldn't say future, but a PERP contract, which I guess is a CFTC regulated swap. as opposed to a future.

Brian, great question. A lot in there is unpacked, but that was the right comment. We still believe, and our litigation will show, that these are swaps, not futures. Anytime two parties exchange payments, as they do in the funding rate, under the Dodd-Frank Act, which I had the distinct pleasure of testifying 20 to 30 times on in 2010, long before anybody at CFTC was up there, Dodd-Frank says. So we feel very confident that that is a swap kind of dose. You asked another question. Would we list those in a separate entity? No, we would not need to list them in a separate entity of clearing. We could list them in our existing clearing because it doesn't mean if you list a PERP that you have to have an auto-liquidation margin methodology in order to have a perpetual. So we would not need a long way from even – as it relates to our relationship with S&P Global, anything that is considered a future and clear, that is, the intellectual property that is all – if we went down that –

Just the systemic risk of potentially approving an equity per – given that market equities are obviously massively larger than crypto.

The systemic risk of an equity perp, if you were to try to list an equity perp the way they are designed today and listed today in crypto, I think it could be a systemic issue for the marketplace because of no one understands full well how that funding rate would work and how it would be calculated because, as we said earlier, it's technically not a future. It's a spot-leveraged product, so that right away has a problem for that particular asset class. And secondly, on the auto-liquidation of a market the size of the U.S. equity, other equity markets, and the participants thereof, it's extremely risky in how they liquidate those products. How much percent does each entity want to preserve to liquidate? And what would happen in a cascading market up or down on liquidation on both sides of first line of defense not their last line of defense and that to me would be a systemic risk not just to the participants that would be a systemic very clear thank you next question is from Alex Blosting with Goldman Sachs your line is now open hi good morning thanks for taking the question I Terry I

was hoping to go back to the point you were making around single stock futures and the fact obviously that's been tried before you think the time is sort of now for these to be more successful. Why now? I guess what makes it different? And maybe talk through how you're planning to partner with various retail distribution platforms to perhaps make this a more successful product now and again ultimately competition from some of those platforms directly to launch other forms of sort of leverage bets on underlying equities.

Yeah. Thanks, Alex. Interesting question. So why timing now? I mean, I've seen a lot of products come and go. And I like to tell people that when you've seen a lot of things, you've seen a lot of people make money being wrong, and you've seen a lot of people losing money being right, and it's all about timing. Right now, the world's evolved since 2000 when the single stock futures, one Chicago joint venture was put forward with three separate entities with three separate agendas under two separate regulators being in the SEC and the CFTC. It was destined kind of for failure of finance. I think it's not a good concept or an idea for risk management protocols as we continue to evolve and it's not too dissimilar to where T-bills were dead forever and all of a sudden when the rates started to do what they did T-bills actually became in flavor in favor again you know she did quite well with them And that can happen in different futures with proliferation of the markets itself. And I'm not suggesting markets are going higher or lower, but when you see the appreciation in the equity markets today, I think people are now looking for other tools and how to hedge out that product where they may not be looking at that with a valuation of the S&P, then 500, much lower as it was in 2000 or the Dow where it was at. and the Russell and NASDAQ. So now with these different levels, I think people are looking at different tools in order to efficiently head, and you don't need to read the daily paper to know that people like to talk about the MAG-7, the MAG-9, whatever the MAG is in vogue, so there's people that are looking in a liquid marketplace where they feel comfortable doing so. We think CME will be the right products for them to mitigate inflation levels, not only to be interested in evaluation of the indexes in and of themselves need to have tools to manage risk, and this is just another tool for them to do so. And Julie Winkler, we're seeing in the equity 13% year-over-year. June, delivering 10.1 million contracts of 54% year-over-year.

Will be financially settled against the closing print of the name, which is a different innovation and different structure versus the prior product, making them not only more accessible to institutional and retail traders in the U.S. CME group and easier to plug and play to all of our distribution partners across the globe. And when you couple that with the near-24 access CME group, capital savings per day to the market, that is what we think is different about it right now. And that's why I think, Terry, it's absolutely right where timing matters and we're on market and the gravity of the complex of CME and look forward to the launch on Monday.

Alex, it's such a good question, and I don't want to work too long on it. But, Julie, I do think it's important.

Our retail broke time and all of them and see them very actively in testing this within their systems. This product is a very straight futures to their trading portfolios, and we believe this is going to continue to introduce a broader retail audience and attract them to CME group markets. So with the 22 biggest names, those are certainly going to be very appealing to retail traders. and we have over 35 retail partners that are targeting their readiness for day one, kind of week one activity. So we do believe this is going to build over time, but we feel very good about the retail brokers as well as the liquidity providers that we have ready to go for Monday.

Thanks, Joe. Thanks, Tim. Alex, thank you. That was a very good question. We appreciate the opportunity to explain that.

Next question is from Ben Budish with Barclays. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning, and thanks for taking the question. So I wonder if you could unpack the strength in market data growth this quarter. You know, even better than last quarter, it looked like a pretty big sequential step up again. You called out pricing, which I think went into effect in January. You called out, you know, new products. I assume there's some, you know, new broker partners and things like that. But just curious if you could unpack that a little bit, and, you know, how should you think about the next couple of quarters, given, you know, we have the pricing, but what else to think through in the near term?

Great. Yeah, thanks, man. Great question.

Yeah, so certainly this has been our Q2 was, again, a strong, very strong in this quarter on record. $238 million in revenue, you know, we saw an increase of 20 percent, as Lynn pointed out earlier, and this was a 6.2 percent sequential growth over last quarter. It's really coming down to a few main factors, you know, the price increase that you mentioned, but a lot of other things as well. We saw a strong growth of 3.5% quarter-on-quarter growth for our professional subscribers, and this is just reinforcing the points that we've made throughout this call of having, you know, access to such a wide array of benchmarks. This real-time data is extremely important, and that is happening across all of our asset classes. We've seen continued revenue expansion in our derived data business. That team is working through the sales pipeline, And there's also a variable component of many of these agreements, which is going to drive additional revenue as other performance-based measures kick in. And as we discussed a bit with you last quarter, you know, these performance-based simulation trading device accounts are really starting to grow rather significantly. Those were up 56% year over year. And really what these simulated trading environments are doing is they're acting as an incubator for both our market data business as well as our transaction-based retail business. So what we see is a robust pipeline of traders that graduate from these simulation environments after they get education, after they get exposure of how to trade, and they then become professional data subscribers in their own right. So it's really a great catalyst for that type of revenue growth. And additionally, it's just worth noting this quarter included approximately $7 million in audits and catch-up payments for prior period, $3.8 million in Q1. These are non-recurring, so, you know, we expect those payments are going to fluctuate quarter on quarter. But I'd say, you know, this performance isn't, you know, a single tailwind but a deliberate part of our multi-pronged strategy really across the data offerings, building demand, and expanding that use also of our benchmark pricing with things like terms so far.

Thanks, Joel.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next question is from Michael Cypress with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Great. Thank you. Good morning.

Just a question on prediction markets. I was hoping you could update us on the traction that you're seeing, particularly outside of sports, and if you could talk to some of the steps that you're taking to drive greater engagement and connectivity, what's on the product roadmap, and more broadly. Can you speak to the market data opportunity ahead with prediction markets?

Yeah, thanks, Mike. The prediction markets, interesting, there seems to be a lot of activity. Linda talked a little bit about how the revenue kicks out on top of those and the way they are structured. And we'll try to keep the sports out of it because, you know, I've been pretty public about this. So a lot of these prediction markets on sports are gambling, and I think that that is going to find its way to the Supreme Court, and that is not something that we want to be a part of participating in right now. As I said earlier, I think a lot of these contracts are susceptible to manipulation when they list some of these small parlays and things of that nature, and those are not markets. Those are gambling. So we'll talk more about the predictions on economic outcomes and things of that nature and give you some stats on how we've broken some of those out. So a couple of people are seeing some of these major events happening,

like the World Cup that Lynn mentioned.

That's a question.

The next question in the queue is from Bill Katz with TD Cowan. Your line is open.

Thank you very much for taking the question. Just a two-parter for me.

Lynn, congratulations on the promotion. I'm wondering, I know it's a little bit of a ways off yet, I'm wondering if you could maybe talk about the timeline, you think, on the case with the CFTC, which district do you think might have an opportunity to take a look at this, and any timing on milestones or pacing would be very helpful.

Starting, Lynn, because that's the right thing to do. So, Lynn, tell us all about your strategies. We can all have it. I've been working on that.

Yes. So the M&A transactions, the partnerships we've done over time, working very closely. It's not a strong departure from what we've delivered or continue that, build on what we have and continue that momentum to make sure we're delivering or they see on the litigation it is this way into the process what we file the

agency has 60 days in order to respond to that filing so that will come upon I believe they have the ability to push it a little further before anything else can happen so that that's just when you are in litigation with the government agency there's a timeline associated with it's not true like a traditional You know, another party for a car accident or something, you know, you have to go, move forward. I think we'll know more.

And the next question in the queue is from Simon Clinch with Rothschild and Redburn. Your line is open.

Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Apologies.

I'm going to bring it back to perpetual futures again, Terry. But I was curious, Terry, the market is really focused on sort of the competitive threat to derivatives franchises from perpetual futures. But I'm interested in your perspective of whether you see any actual sort of adjacent opportunities or symbiotic opportunities between listed futures and perpetual futures in the long run, should they become a more substantial market for speculative retail?

Interesting, interesting question, my friend, Simon, because I do see opportunities. As people continue to introduce these products that I believe are swaps, As you know, Simon, swaps need to be margined for five days. You need to be not something a participant's activity normally is. But I also think it lends to an opportunity for them to be looking at our markets and our retail products as it goes forward. So some of these entities that are listing some of these products, whether they're perps or other type of products on retail, I think directly it's like an incubator system that I'm not paying for, and they are. So we are working our retail business educational way to make sure we have sustainable clients going forward. There's other people that I would suggest that maybe are not doing the same. Some are that could potentially be a part of CME Group going forward. I'm a big believer that large commercial institutions drive the marketplace. They drive the price discovery function, and then it trickles down from there, and other participants will participate. is that what's SOC done and catered to the institution by taking, and I mentioned this earlier, an S&P 500 from the year 2001 or 2002 to a multiple of 250 to an e-mini to a micro to something smaller than that to meet the needs of different participants. So I think that some of these new on the growth of CME's retail business or of institutions have the 130 million open positions that we have today, the $95 billion of efficiencies at that $130 million open interest, that's very attractive. Now the question is, can we create smaller products of those products for the institutions to trade that are potentially trading at another venue right now in an incubator-type system? I work with some of our retail partners today, and I will mention a few, Ninja being one of them, Top Step being another. These are people that are very committed to bringing their client base into CME in the right way. happen to meet with both. They are looking at new ways and how to bring their client to competition and the landscape of this.

That's great. Thanks, Terry.

Appreciate it. Thanks, Simon.

And we'll take our last question from Ashish Sabhadra with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, guys. This is Will Chee on First Use Sabhadra.

Appreciate you guys squeezing us in. Maybe just a question more on market data and the trends there. you know, with the growing usage of Gen AI and genetic tools within financial market participants, have you seen that as a meaningful demand driver for CME's data solutions just around those factors?

That's a good question. Well, thank you very much.

Yeah, I would say it's still relatively early days of, you know, trying to think about what the primary means of which we distribute our data today is certainly from a data channel. Yet, again, the way that consumption is happening in the future is changing. And so we have been actively, you know, in this space also working on our policies as well to ensure that we are going to meet people where they're going to be consuming data in the future as well as continuing to offer the feeds that we do today. And so, you know, again, I think a lot of it is we've got a lot of very valuable intellectual property, and we want to make sure that we continue to protect that. And as we've demonstrated, we are in a great period of growth.

Thank you, guys.

The next question in the queue is from Michael Cypress with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Thanks so much for taking the follow-up.

Just coming back to this PERP discussion, if you step back from it for a moment, one of the broader trends across crypto and prediction markets is this move toward more vertically integrated, direct-to-customer marketplaces with firms owning both customer relationships as well as the trading venues.

I guess how do you see this as a competitive threat to CME here, maybe even longer term? Talk about how you're thinking and approaching that, some of the steps you might take. I know you do have your own FCM that you've started to use on the prediction market.

So I'm just curious how you're thinking about that and as market structures continue to evolve.

Yeah, you know, Mike, that's a great question. And I think when you talk about vertically integrated and that's basically the same as talking about disintermediation of participants in the marketplace today. So, you know, we have a whole list of FCMs. We've got our own FCM, which we do not compete with. We believe in that model. That lends to the credibility of all participants, whether it's the smallest of sales or retail participants. So when they start to look at vertically integrated or maybe participating in the market, managing that risk and doing other things, there could be, might be a little concerned about conflicts is the word I guess I was looking for. And I'm not suggesting there would be, but, you know, during today, we are going to have our own FCM a couple of years ago. As you recall at the time, FTX and what they were trying to accomplish. And I was not going to be unprepared for whatever the scenario may or may not be in the future to have a structure in place for CME to compete in the world that you outlined. But I assure you, I don't want to be a leader in that, but I will be prepared for that. Great. Thanks so much. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate it.

Showing no further questions, I will now hand the call back over to management.

And before we wrap up, I just, you know, we talked about a lot of different things here today, but one of the largest asset classes we have is rates. And we are, you know, continuing to create efficiencies. And I just want to touch real quick, because the question didn't come up on it, and I thought it should, is on the Treasury Link. Mike, could you just give a quick explanation on how that's going to work and the benefits for our fund?

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Terry. I appreciate you calling out Treasury Link. We're excited to announce Treasury Link. It's really an industry-first treasury functionality that will enable transparent centralized spread trading between Treasury futures and broker-tech cash treasuries on CME Globex. We're leveraging proven FX-linked technology, and it's expected to launch in Q4, 2026. So this new offering connects to two leading U.S. Treasury liquidity pools, bringing unique innovation by enabling atomic execution of cash-for-suiture spread transactions and eliminating lagging risk in the process. The team and I have been out in front of clients, and we see strong demand from both existing and prospective new participants who are interested in realizing execution efficiencies between cash and futures. Notably, the leg of various relative value trades takes place away from broker tech, and this offering will be highly complementary to the existing broker tech liquidity and expansive to total broker tech trading activity. Treasury Link really represents the next stage in our initiative to bring our cash and futures markets closer together, delivering unique efficiencies while enhancing liquidity and price discovery for the broader U.S. Treasury market. Look, it's really an evolving time in the Treasury landscape. We have a new Fed chair who is committed to overhauling their communication style. We continue to see record debt levels in this country, and we will see the Treasury and repo clearing mandate phased in over the next year. So Treasury Link is just another example of how the CME group continues to innovate and deliver efficiencies for our clients alongside the $27 billion a day in margin savings across teachers' options, swaps, and cash.

We're very excited to announce TreasuryLink, and I appreciate, Terry, you calling it out. Thanks, Mike. I appreciate the explanation. It is important. I know we get caught up a little bit on the soup du jour, and I want to thank everybody on this call. This gave us an opportunity to hopefully set the record straight on where our business is at, where we feel from a competitive standpoint, and what exactly are the products that are supposedly competing with our core business and what our core business looks like today. I can't thank each and every one of you enough for your very poignant questions, and I think they were all great, and we are excited about the new offerings we have going forward. We're excited about the new cohorts and clients that will be coming into our marketplace. I think that when you look at the $95 billion of efficiencies, when you look at what we are accomplishing here, the 94% of our trade being institutional and how we think that could add and grow to our retail business down the road and do it in a thoughtful, educational way that's sustainable for a long time to come. We appreciate your questions, and we wish you a good day, and thank you very much for your interest in CME Group. Thank you.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at this time.