CFTC approves perpetual futures on single US stocks, a first for the US

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has approved perpetual futures trading on individual US stocks, according to a breaking alert from WatcherGuru. It marks the first time the product has been greenlit for American equities. No other details accompanied the announcement.

Perpetual futures are contracts with no expiry date — unlike standard futures, which settle on a fixed date. To keep them tethered to the underlying price, they rely on periodic funding payments between longs and shorts. Crypto traders have leaned on them for years, mostly on offshore venues.

The approval opens the door to putting that same structure on single-name US stocks inside the CFTC's regulated derivatives framework. The agency is the main US overseer of futures and swaps markets, so its sign-off is the gate that matters for this kind of product.

What's still missing is the fine print. The announcement named no exchanges, no launch date and no list of which stocks would be covered. Those specifics typically surface through exchange filings and later agency notices.

Traders will now watch for which venues move first and how quickly the contracts go live. Whether the structure translates cleanly to equities — where funding mechanics and stock borrow costs behave differently than in crypto — remains to be seen.

For now, the headline is simple: a product born in crypto just got a foothold in the US stock market.