TacticScaleWhat CME Does & How It Makes Money (CME)
Updated October 2026 · reflects CME's latest reported financials
Operator of global futures and options exchanges and clearing houses. CME earns fees on each contract traded and cleared on its exchanges, plus clearing fees for cleared swaps.
How CME makes money
CME earns fees on each contract traded and cleared on its exchanges, plus clearing fees for cleared swaps. It also earns revenue by selling real-time and historical market data.
What CME does
CME Group, founded in 1898 and headquartered in Chicago, operates contract markets for futures and options on futures worldwide. Its products cover interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, and agricultural, energy, and metals commodities, and it also provides fixed income and foreign currency trading services. Customers include professional traders, financial institutions, institutional and individual investors, corporations, producers, governments, and central banks. Beyond trading, CME runs clearing house services that clear, settle, and guarantee futures and options contracts and cleared swaps, and it sells real-time and historical market data. The company was formerly known as Chicago Mercantile Exchange Holdings Inc. and took the CME Group name in July 2007. It has also partnered with FutureSports on futures based on sports indexes.
Products & services
- Interest rate futures and options
- Equity index futures and options
- Foreign exchange futures
- Agricultural, energy and metals futures
- Clearing house services
- Real-time and historical market data
What is CME worth?
On an owner-earnings DCF, CME's most-likely value is about $262 versus a recent price near $281 (7% above fair value). But TacticScale only calls a stock undervalued when the price sits below its conservative no-growth floor (~$121) with a margin of safety — so the honest verdict here is “Fairly priced — no edge.” Fair value earns its keep only at the extremes, not in the wide middle.
Price sits in the normal range — fair value isn't actionable here; it earns its keep only when price drops below the no-growth floor, or runs to roughly double the optimistic case.
Analysis, not advice. Fair value is a margin-of-safety estimate from a deterministic owner-earnings DCF, not a price target or recommendation. See the full breakdown →
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