CME — Q3 2026 Financial Report Analysis

Volume up 16% on an easy comparison: revenue +13%, EPS +16%

CME Group runs the world's largest futures exchanges (CME, CBOT, NYMEX and COMEX). A futures contract is an agreement to buy or sell something, such as a Treasury bond, a stock index, crude oil or gold, at a set price on a later date. CME earns most of its money from a small fee on every contract traded and cleared through its clearing house, which stands between buyer and seller and guarantees the trade. Two numbers therefore drive the business: how many contracts trade each day, and the average fee per contract.

In Q3 2026 (July–September), average daily volume (ADV, contracts traded per day) rose 16% from a year earlier, to 29.4 million contracts, a record for a third quarter. Every one of CME's six asset classes grew by double digits. The average fee per contract fell 3%, to $0.679, so clearing and transaction fees rose a smaller 12%, to $1,378.1 million. Market data revenue rose 20% again, to a record $243.1 million. Total revenue rose 13%, to $1,737.3 million. Expenses grew only 5.5%, so operating income rose 17% and diluted EPS rose 16%, to $2.89.

Part of that growth comes from the starting point: Q3 2025 was CME's weakest quarter last year (25.3 million contracts a day, against 27.4 million in Q4 2025 and 29.8 million in Q2 2026). Measured against the quarter just before, Q3 was flat: ADV slipped 1% and revenue rose 2%.

This report is written from CME's earnings release (Exhibit 99.1 to its 8-K of October 21, 2026). The full 10-Q, with management's discussion and analysis (MD&A), per-product fee revenue and the cash flow statement, isn't filed yet, so the release doesn't explain several of the movements below.

Key metrics

Operating margin is the share of revenue left after the costs of running the business, before investment income, interest and tax. "Adjusted" figures are CME's own, excluding items it treats as outside normal operations (explained below).

Nine months to September 30, 2026: revenue $5,323.6M (+9.3%), operating income $3,558.2M (+10.9%), operating margin 66.8% (vs 65.9%), net income $3,233.0M (+11.9%), diluted EPS $8.96 (vs $7.92, +13.1%).

Takeaway: Q3's growth is a volume story set against a weak year-ago quarter, and CME kept most of it. Volume rose 16%, but a 3% lower fee per contract cut fee growth to 12%. Expenses grew far more slowly than revenue (+5.5% vs +13%), which lifted the margin 2.4 points. Compared with Q2, activity was flat. The next quarters depend on whether trading stays near 29–30 million contracts a day, not on further growth from here.

Volume: every asset class up, none accelerating

Both quarters had 64 trading days, so the year-over-year comparison isn't distorted by calendar differences.

• Interest rates (51% of volume) is CME's largest business and the one the Q2 report flagged as weakest: Q2 rates volume was down 6% year over year, which the 10-Q put down to more certainty about Federal Reserve policy. In Q3, rates ADV rose 13% year over year and 4% from Q2, the only large class that grew sequentially. The release doesn't break this down by contract (SOFR futures, Treasury futures) or explain it.
• Equity indexes rose the most year over year (+23%) but fell 11% from Q2. The release doesn't say which contracts drove either move.
• Energy, agriculture, FX and metals were all up 13–18% year over year and roughly flat against Q2.
• Non-US ADV reached 9 million contracts, a third-quarter high, about 31% of total volume.

CEO Terry Duffy attributes the quarter to clients managing risk "as uncertainty intensified in Q3". The release names no specific event.

Fee per contract: lower in four of six classes

The average rate per contract (RPC, total futures and options fees divided by contracts traded) fell to $0.679 from $0.702. By class:

The decline isn't a mix effect, meaning a shift towards cheaper asset classes. Interest rates, the cheapest class per contract, made up a slightly smaller share of volume (51.4% vs 52.8%). Instead, the fee fell within equities, energy and metals. In the Q2 10-Q, CME blamed this on more "micro" contracts (smaller contracts, popular with retail traders, that carry lower fees) and more trading by exchange members, who pay lower rates. The release doesn't explain Q3's decline, so whether the same causes apply will only be known from the 10-Q.

Our rough arithmetic (ADV × RPC × 64 days): futures and options fees rose about $142M. Higher volume at last year's rates would have added about $185M. The lower rate took back about $43M.

Market data: 20% growth for another quarter

Market data and information services (fees for real-time prices and historical data) rose 20%, to $243.1M, the same pace as Q2 (+20%). For the nine months it rose 19%, to $705.3M. In the Q2 10-Q, CME credited higher usage, new customer segments and price increases. The release gives no reason for Q3. This line now makes up 14.0% of revenue, up from 13.2% a year ago. It is the steadiest source of growth, because it doesn't depend on how many contracts trade.

Costs: slower growth than revenue, mainly because of last year's one-offs

Total expenses rose $30.9M (+5.5%):

• Licensing and other fee agreements +$22.6M (+28%), to $104.2M. These are mostly royalties paid to index owners, such as S&P and Nasdaq, when futures on their indexes trade. The Q2 10-Q tied increases here to equity volume, and equity ADV rose 23%.
• Technology +$9.5M (+13%), to $80.9M. CME is moving its trading platform to Google Cloud, and its risk factors mention the cost of running both its own data centers and the cloud during the move.
• Compensation and benefits -$3.3M (-1%) and professional fees -$5.6M (-15%) partly offset these increases.

What the headline numbers hide

• The comparison flatters the growth rate. Q3 2025 was the low point of last year. Against Q2 2026, revenue rose 1.8% and net income slipped 0.5% ($1,036.9M vs $1,041.8M). Year over year growth of 13% describes a recovery from a weak quarter, not a business growing at that pace.
• GAAP grew faster than adjusted, because last year had more one-off costs. CME's adjusted figures exclude amortization of acquired intangible assets (an accounting charge for past acquisitions, $56.0M in operating expenses), restructuring and severance, litigation, and deal and real-estate costs. The gap between adjusted and GAAP net income shrank to $47.0M from $70.4M. Q3 2025 included $8.5M of litigation costs and $3.7M of deal costs, while Q3 2026 had neither. So GAAP net income grew 14.2% but adjusted net income grew 10.8%. Adjusted expenses grew 9.3%, not 5.5%. The adjusted operating margin rose a smaller 1.0 point, to 69.4% from 68.4%. Cost growth of around 9% is the better guide to underlying cost growth.
• Tax didn't help. The effective tax rate rose to 23.5% from 22.9% (and from Q2's 21.5%, which benefited from a one-off state tax settlement). At last year's rate, net income would have been about $8M higher.
• Buybacks helped only a little. Diluted EPS (+16.1%) grew faster than net income (+14.2%) mainly because, a year ago, some earnings were allocated to preferred shares, which converted into common stock in March 2026. Net income available to common shareholders rose 15.6%. The diluted share count fell 0.5%, to 358.6M, even after 4.6M shares were added by the preferred conversion. That reduction came from $524M of buybacks in the quarter, on top of $465M of regular dividends.
• Interest on client collateral was flat on a net basis. Clearing firms post cash as collateral (performance bonds and guaranty fund contributions, $155.2B at quarter-end). CME invests it and pays most of the interest back to them. Investment income fell 8%, to $1,418.1M, while "other non-operating expense", which in CME's 10-Qs is mainly the interest passed back to clearing firms, fell 9.5%, to $1,264.0M. The difference was $154.1M, against $152.1M a year ago. The release doesn't split these lines, so this is our arithmetic from the totals.
• No cash flow statement yet. The release includes the income statement and balance sheet, but not cash flows, so it isn't possible to check how much of the profit turned into cash until the 10-Q. Cash fell to $2.2B, from $4.4B at year-end. The Q2 10-Q attributed most of this to the annual variable dividend paid in Q1 and to buybacks. Debt was unchanged at $3.4B.
• A new item in the footnotes. Amortization of $1.4M on CME's stake in FanDuel Prediction Markets Holdings LLC now appears in the adjusted-earnings reconciliation. This is the event-contracts (prediction markets) venture, accounted for as an unconsolidated investment. Earnings from such investments rose 6.7%, to $102.8M, even though CME no longer books earnings from OSTTRA, which it sold in Q4 2025.

Did last time's read hold up?

The Q2 2026 report listed five things to watch, and mostly they played out as expected:

• "Whether Q2 was a low point or the new normal." Q2 was the new normal. Q3 volume (29.4M) was close to Q2's (29.8M), and rates volume recovered (+4% from Q2, +13% year over year).
• "Whether the rate per contract stabilizes in Q3." It did against Q2 ($0.679 vs $0.678), but it remains 3% below a year ago.
• Costs vs revenue. Revenue grew 13%, faster than costs (5.5% GAAP, 9.3% adjusted), so the margin rose to 65.7%, above the ~65% level that report said was at risk.
• Market data as the dependable line. It grew 20% again.
• Collateral interest under Fed rate cuts. Investment income fell 8%, but CME's net share was flat ($154.1M vs $152.1M).

Outlook

The release gives no financial guidance. Our read:

• The question for Q4 is whether volume holds. Q4 2025 ADV was 27.4M, so a Q4 near 29–30M would mean year-over-year growth of roughly 6–10%. That is still growth, but well below Q3's 16%, because the comparison gets harder. Volume depends on volatility, which no one can forecast.
• The fee per contract has stopped falling against Q2 but isn't recovering. If micro contracts and member trading keep taking a larger share, volume growth will keep turning into somewhat smaller fee growth.
• Costs are growing around 9% on an adjusted basis, driven by index licence fees, which rise with equity volume, and the Google Cloud migration. That is fine while revenue grows 13%, but if volume growth slows towards single digits in Q4, the margin gains could stop.
• Market data and capital returns are the steady parts. Market data has grown about 20% for two quarters running. CME is returning about $1B a quarter through dividends and buybacks, after buying back almost nothing in the first half of 2025.

Source: CME Group earnings release for the third quarter of 2026 (Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K, filed October 21, 2026). Prior-quarter and 10-Q explanations are from CME's Form 10-Q for Q2 2026. Fee decomposition, sequential comparisons, tax-rate and net-collateral figures are our arithmetic from the reported numbers.