OneChicago, home of single-stock futures

OneChicago was launched in November 2002 as a new exchange for U.S. single-stock futures, a new class of financial instruments whose trading was made possible by the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (CFMA).

Single-stock and narrow-index futures were long banned in the U.S. because they involved both securities and futures, which led to a deadlock over who should regulate them, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The CFMA ended the deadlock by letting both regulators in charge of oversight.

OneChicago is a joint venture created by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) and the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). The futures exchange runs on CBOEdirect, the CBOE’s screen-based trading system.

Singles-tock futures have failed to attract as much enthusiasm as was once envisioned. OneChicago is the sole U.S. market trading these products today, as its competitor NQLX, itself a joint-venture between NASDAQ and Euronext, shut down its doors in December 2004.