Robinhood plans to add CME Group’s Equity, Crypto, and Commodity Futures

Robinhood announced Wednesday it will include CME Group’s most popular futures products on its trading app, including the four leading U.S. equity indices: SP 500, Nasdaq-100, Russell 2000, and Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The trading platform will also include futures trading for USD and EUR, Bitcoin and ether, gold, silver, and copper, as well as additional commodities such as crude oil and natural gas.

CME Group revealed that it will introduce Bitcoin Friday futures next month, which is pending regulatory review. Joshua Lim, Global Co-head of Markets, FalconX, said that CME Group’s Bitcoin Friday futures will provide the granularity market participants need for hedging and expressing views on Bitcoin.

Robinhood plans to launch Bitcoin futures trading

Robinhood teased futures trading for Bitcoin, oil, and gold and said the new service will be “coming soon.” The firm’s expansion into futures trading comes as the platform has been making efforts to offer additional crypto-related investment opportunities to its customers. Earlier this month, the stock trading and investment platform began allowing its customers to trade the TRUMP memecoin. 

Despite offering fewer trading options than its competitors, the platform listed major tokens, such as SOL, ADA, XRP, and PEPE, following Trump’s election victory in November. The investment platform had previously distanced itself from Solana, Cardano, and XRP in 2023 after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission targeted companies like Coinbase due to the alleged sale of unregistered securities.

Julie Winkler, Chief Commercial Officer at CME Group, expressed that the firm was pleased to offer some of their most popular futures contracts to the broad network of retail traders on Robinhood. She argued that the demand for futures had skyrocketed as a new generation of self-directed traders looked for diversified investment opportunities.

Winkler also added that expanding retail access to futures trading was an integral step in educating and empowering the new wave of investors. She said she was looking forward to working with the trading platform to continue providing the products and resources needed to enter today’s most important markets.

JB Mackenzie, VP and GM of Futures and International at Robinhood also noted that the first will be “rolling out an elegant new mobile trading ladder” – a feature Mackenzie said will make trading futures on Robinhood an “easy decision.”

Robinhood introduces options on Bitcoin Friday futures

CME Group announced that it will introduce options on Bitcoin Friday futures on February 24. The company said the options will be its first cryptocurrency options to be financially settled, with expiries available every day of the business week, Monday through Friday.

“We are pleased to offer these new options that provide traders with even greater precision to manage short-term bitcoin price risk. Building on the success of our Bitcoin Friday futures, the smaller size of these contracts, along with daily expiries, offer market participants a capital-efficient toolset to effectively adjust their bitcoin exposure.”

– Giovanni Vicioso , CME Group Global Head of Cryptocurrency Products.

According to CME Group, financially settled options on Bitcoin Friday futures will complement the company’s existing suite of physically settled options on Bitcoin, Ether, Micro Bitcoin, and Micro Ether futures and provide the firm with additional risk management flexibility for investors.

Jason Urban, Global Head of Trading at Galaxy, viewed CME Group’s introduction of options on Bitcoin Friday futures as a timely, important addition to the market. Urban argued that the contracts will offer a flexible and cost-effective way for the company’s trading desk to optimize risk management and provide tailored solutions to the company’s counterparties to navigate bitcoin price volatility.

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