Traders are getting a new tool to wager on the biggest U.S. stocks

Investors will soon have another way to bet on the hottest stocks from Nvidia Corp. to SpaceX, without trading a single share.

CME Group Inc. will launch single-stock futures Monday, allowing investors to hedge or speculate on more than 50 of the largest US companies. The contracts, offering leverage without the complexity of options, will be cash-settled on the closing price of the stocks they’re tied to. 

The world’s largest derivatives exchange is betting the rise of retail trading and today’s market environment of hot IPOs with limited share availability will make the single-stock futures — a tool that failed to gain traction in the US after its first first launch 24 years ago — a success this time around. 

“This has the ability to bring in a lot of new traders to our ecosystem,” Tim McCourt, global head of equities, FX and alternative products at CME, said in a phone interview. The exchange is targeting retail traders, having lined up more than 35 retail intermediaries to help get the futures in front of them, and institutional investors like asset managers, for whom it’ll be a new tool to manage risk, he said.

Unlike options, single-stock futures provide leveraged exposure without requiring the knowledge of concepts like the Greeks — the variables that determine how changes in stock prices, volatility, time and interest rates impact the derivatives’ pricing. 

One use case for futures will be to give investors long or short exposure to stocks where there is a shortage of........

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