The largest futures exchange operator, formed from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CBOT, NYMEX and COMEX.
One company now lists the products traders think of as separate exchanges: equity indexes and livestock from the CME, grains and Treasuries from the cbot, energy from NYMEX and metals from comex. They share the globex platform and one clearing house.
Consolidation means one rulebook for margin, delivery and halts across very different markets, which is convenient — and concentrates a lot of the world's price discovery in a single venue.
Example: a trader running ES, zn, cl and gc is technically trading four legacy exchanges but sees one platform, one margin calculation and one clearing statement.
Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.
Margin and leverage. A $5,000 deposit can control a $100,000 position, which is 20:1 leverage. Because the loss is measured on the full $100,000, a 2.5% move against you halves the deposit and brings a margin call, and a 5% move uses all of it.
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