CME Group heads into a week centred on new trading functionality for CME Globex, with the changes taking effect on Sunday, 15 November, for the Monday, 16 November trade date. The upgrade broadens what the exchange's electronic platform can do for traders in short-term interest-rate and equity-index futures.

The main change extends implied trading functionality on Globex to support calendar and butterfly spreads with mixed tick legs for selected short-term interest-rate futures. In plain terms, it lets the platform generate implied prices and matches for spread trades where the different legs move in different minimum price steps, for example 0.25 on one leg and 0.50 on another. CME Group says the move is designed to support price discovery and order matching efficiency.

A second change brings a new exchange-defined implied equity-index calendar futures spread to Globex, using a new strategy type. It covers E-mini S&P 500 Equal Weight futures, E-mini Russell 1000 futures, E-mini Russell 1000 Value futures, E-mini Russell 1000 Growth futures, E-mini Russell 2000 Value futures and E-mini Russell 2000 Growth futures. The products have been available for customer testing in CME's New Release environment ahead of the launch.

Traders will not need to change their systems to use the new functionality. CME Group has said there are no iLink or MDP 3.0 message schema updates or tag changes with the launch, although clients have been encouraged to test implied order execution, rounding and fill processing in the New Release environment before the changes go live.

The launch follows a strong third quarter for the exchange operator. In its results release dated 21 October, CME Group reported revenue of 1.7 billion US dollars and average daily volume of 29.4 million contracts. Market data revenue reached a record 243 million US dollars in the quarter.

The same Sunday also brings a smaller operational change. CME Group will standardise the client-facing port ranges for its iLink Market Segment Gateways and Drop Copy sessions across futures, options and EBS segments in the New Release and certification testing environments, aligning test-session ports with the range used in production. BrokerTec sessions are not affected at this stage.

Globex is the electronic platform on which much of the world's interest-rate and equity-index futures trading takes place, so even technical upgrades to how spreads are priced and matched matter to the banks, funds and trading firms that hedge on it every day. Smoother implied pricing for calendar and butterfly spreads should make it easier to put on and take off positions that span different contract months, particularly where the legs trade on different tick sizes.

CME Group stock traded at 274.53 euros on Lang & Schwarz at 17:36 CET on Sunday, 8 November. The first live session under the new functionality will be the Monday, 16 November trade date, when traders will see whether the wider implied spreads bring the extra liquidity in rates and equity-index futures that the exchange is aiming for.