American retail traders are on course to buy leveraged exposure to a single stock on lighter margin than European rules allow for the same trade. FM Intelligence has published an analysis putting the US floor at 15% of a position's value.
The same exposure sold to a retail client in the European Union or the United Kingdom requires 20%, according to the FM Intelligence comparison of margin floors by wrapper.
Three exchanges filed within two weeks to list the contracts, days apart from each other and from Kalshi's 58 equity-linked contracts.
Coinbase Derivatives lodged Form 1-N with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on September 1, Bitnomial on September 4 and North American Derivatives Exchange, which trades as Crypto.com Derivatives North America, on September 14.
The gap matters because the European figure never travels alone. A single-stock contract for difference sold to a retail client in the EU or UK carries leverage caps, margin close-out, negative balance protection, a standardized risk warning and a ban on trading incentives.
None of those five attaches to a US security future. The products are economically alike: cash settled, no expiry, financed by a periodic payment between the two sides.
Fifteen Percent Against Europe's Twenty
The American floor dates from December 2020, when the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) cut required margin on an unhedged security futures position from 20% to 15% of current market value. No venue was listing the product at the time.
Europe settled the naming question in February. The European Securities and Markets Authority told firms that "the commercial name provided by firms (e.g. 'perpetual futures') is irrelevant" for classification.
That statement also listed what does not take a product outside the CFD rulebook, a funding rate mechanism included. As FinanceMagnates.com reported in February, the classification drags in the whole product intervention package.
For crypto perpetuals sold in Europe the practical result was leverage falling from 10x to 2x.
Three Filings, One Regulator
Form 1-N is a notice registration under Section 6(g) of the Exchange Act. It is open to a CFTC-designated contract market that lists nothing but security futures products, and it takes effect on filing instead of on a Commission vote.
Bitnomial's proposed rule change of September 18 describes itself as notice-registered under that section. Its first single-stock perpetual futures will run through CFTC product applications under Regulation 41.23(b).
That cuts against how the filings were read last week. The venues did not bypass the SEC. They registered with it, under a framework Congress wrote in 2000 for security futures and which fell into disuse after the OneChicago exchange closed in 2020.
A Crowded Month for US Retail Access
The filings landed among adjacent decisions. The SEC granted eToro USA Securities and Alpaca Securities relief for accounts that hold no customer cash on September 17, with notice that funds held at an outside bank fall outside Securities Investor Protection Corporation coverage.
The same day the Commission issued a five-year conditional exemption for venues trading tokenized US-listed stock. NYSE Arca wants to list binary options on company performance indicators, screened to issuers above $3 billion in market value, with comments closing on October 9.
Established exchanges are arriving from the other side. CME Group listed quarterly single-stock futures in July, a dated contract rather than a perpetual one.
For brokers outside the United States the comparison is arithmetic. A retail single-stock book run under EU or UK measures is priced on 20% initial margin, which now sits above the American benchmark.
What the Court Case Would Change
The margin number is not fixed. CME Group sued the CFTC and its chairman in June in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing that a contract with no expiry and recurring funding payments is a swap and not a future.
The differences between perpetuals, CFDs and dated futures sit mostly in who pays that financing and how the rate is set.
The CFTC moved to dismiss on September 2 and the answer from CME Group is due in early October. Classification carries a clearing consequence: under CFTC rules a clearing house margins futures on a minimum one-day liquidation horizon and most swaps on five days.
FM Intelligence estimates that swap status would put clearing margin at 27% to 45% of position value, against an assumed 12% to 20% today. That would cut maximum retail leverage to between 2.2x and 3.7x from 6.7x.
The estimate scales the one-day requirement by the square root of time. It rests on an assumed base, since no clearing house has published margin for a contract that is not yet listed.
None of the three exchanges has named a launch date. Customer funds in US futures accounts stood at $455.2 billion across 52 futures commission merchants in April, according to FIA calculations on CFTC filings.
This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.
Source: Finance Magnates
