More trading lifted CME's revenue 13% even as each contract earned less

CME Group runs futures and options exchanges and a clearing house, and earns a fee on almost every contract traded and cleared there. In the September 2026 quarter its revenue was 13.0% higher than a year earlier, and the reason is plain in its own operating statistics: clients traded 16.3% more contracts a day, while the average fee the exchange collected on each one fell 3.3%. The growth came from activity, which CME does not control, rather than from price, which it does.

Price was supposed to help this year. When it reported its 2025 results in February, the company said transaction fee changes taking effect in April, together with a market data fee change from January and revised incentive programmes, would add roughly 1% to 1.5% to total revenue if activity stayed similar to 2025. Part of that lift came through market data, where revenue rose 20%. None of it shows in the average fee per futures or options contract. Interest-rate contracts earned almost exactly what they did a year ago, while metals and equity-index contracts earned noticeably less per trade. The company's own risk language explains how that happens: the rate moves with the mix of products, trading venues and customers, and with its tiered pricing, which charges big users less per contract as they trade more. A quarter in which large clients traded heavily can push the average down even while list prices rise, so a lower rate is not by itself a sign of weaker pricing.

The second thing to weigh is the starting point. Revenue a year ago had fallen 3.0% from the same quarter of the year before, which made this year's comparison an easy one. Measured against two years earlier, last quarter's revenue was up 9.7%, a smaller gain on that basis than in either of the first two quarters of this year. Revenue in the second and third quarters has also settled at about $1.7 billion each, after a first quarter lifted by a burst of trading.

What turned more trading into more profit was cost control. Total expenses rose 5.5%, far slower than revenue, so operating income climbed 17.4%. Calculated from the reported figures, about 85 cents of each extra revenue dollar reached operating income. Part of that gain is flattered by the year-ago quarter, which carried a litigation charge and other items the company excludes from its adjusted results. On that adjusted basis, operating margin, the share of revenue left after operating costs, rose to 69.4% from 68.4%, calculated from the company's adjusted figures: better, but by less than the reported figures suggest.

That discipline frames the one cost figure left to watch this year. The company guided early in the year to adjusted operating expenses, excluding licence fees, of about $1.695 billion for the full year, and repeated the figure in the spring. Spending on that basis through nine months, calculated from the reported figures, leaves about $450 million for the fourth quarter, roughly 5% more than was spent in the third. Either costs step up at year end or the year finishes below the guide.

None of this makes the quarter a weak one. It means that the gain rested on how much clients needed to trade during an unsettled period, and on costs held in check, more than on anything the exchange charged. Futures on computing power, a new market management had guided would launch this year, now wait on a regulator's decision.