CME Group (CME)

The sleeper story is what CME stopped talking about: the prediction market metrics that were front-and-center last quarter (525M contracts, 140K accounts, 40% ADV growth) simply vanished this call, replaced by a vague NHL futures anecdote that's 'early days, just a few weeks in'. The obvious headline, record Q3 revenue and EPS, is real, but underneath it the buyback pace fell 25% QoQ right as the special capital program wound down, and core open interest growth in equity, rates, and energy is flattening even as volume races higher, a divergence Duffy waved off as a byproduct of weekly expirations rather than engage with directly. The binding constraint on CME's next leg of growth isn't demand, it's regulatory timing: compute futures went from a firm 'later this year' target to an explicitly 'still unknown' timeline with Duffy admitting 'we're playing the long game', and the 24/7 WTI contract wasn't delayed, it was withdrawn outright. My view changes if next quarter's call reinstates prediction market metrics with growth intact, the OI/volume gap closes, or compute futures gets a hard launch date; absent that, this is a strong print with two quietly slipping growth options and one disappearing disclosure line.