- Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT)
- New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and COMEX
- Kansas City Board of Trade (KCBOT)
| Type | Public |
|---|---|
| Industry | Financial Services |
| Founded | 1898 |
| Headquarters | Chicago, Illinois, United States |
Key people | Terrence A. Duffy (Chairman & CEO) John W. Pietrowicz (CFO) |
| Revenue |  US$5.02 billion (2022) |
| US$3.02 billion (2022) | |
| US$2.69 billion (2022) | |
| Total assets |  US$174.2 billion (2022) |
| Total equity | US$26.88 billion (2022) |
Number of employees | c. 3,460 (December 2022) |
| Subsidiaries | |
| Website | cmegroup |
| Footnotes / references [1] | |
CME Group Inc., headquartered in Chicago, operates financial derivatives exchanges including the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Chicago Board of Trade, New York Mercantile Exchange, and The Commodity Exchange. It is the world's largest operator of financial derivatives exchanges. Its exchanges are platforms for trading in agricultural products, currencies, energy, interest rates, metals, futures contracts, options, stock indexes, and cryptocurrencies futures. In 2022, CME Group futures and options had an average daily volume of 23.3 million contracts. Trading is conducted in two methods: an open outcry format and the CME Globex Trading System, an electronic trading platform. The company also owns 27% of S&P Dow Jones Indices.[1][2][3][4]
The company pioneered the CME SPAN software that is used as the official performance bond (margin) mechanism of 50 registered exchanges, clearing organizations, service bureaus, and regulatory agencies.[5]
CME was founded in 1898 as a nonprofit corporation.[1] In 1919, it established its clearing house.[1] In 2000, CME demutualized.[1] In 2002, CME Group became a public company via an initial public offering.[1] The company acquired CBOT Holdings in 2007 in an $8 billion stock transaction.[1][6] The company acquired the New York Mercantile Exchange, owner of both the NYMEX exchange and the Commodity Exchange (COMEX), in 2008.[1][7]
In 2010, the company acquired a majority stake in Dow Jones Indexes, which was combined with S&P Global’s index business in 2012 to form S&P Dow Jones Indices, of which the company has a 27% ownership stake.[1][8][9][10]
In 2012, the company acquired the Kansas City Board of Trade, the dominant venue for the sale of hard red winter wheat, for $126 million in cash.[1][11][12]
In 2018, the company acquired NEX Group for $5.5 billion.[1][13][14]
Operating during regular trading hours (RTH), the open outcry method consists of floor traders standing in a trading pit to call out orders, prices, and quantities of a particular commodity or its derivatives. Different colored jackets are worn by the traders to indicate what firm they are a part of. In addition, complex hand signals (called Arb) are used. These hand signals were first used in the 1970s. Today, however, headsets are also used by the brokers to communicate with the traders. The pits are areas of the floor that are lowered to facilitate communication, somewhat like a miniature amphitheater. The pits can be raised and lowered depending on trading volume. To an onlooker, the open outcry system can look chaotic and confusing, but in reality the system is a tried and true method of accurate and efficient trading. An illustrated project to record the hand signal language used in CME's trading pits has been compiled.[15]
