CME Group Inc. is preparing to introduce a new way for investors to gain exposure to some of the largest U.S. companies, from Nvidia Corp. to SpaceX, without buying or selling the underlying shares.

The world’s largest derivatives exchange plans to launch single-stock futures on Monday, offering contracts that allow investors to hedge or speculate on more than 50 major U.S. companies. The futures will be cash-settled based on the closing price of the stocks to which they are linked and are designed to provide leveraged exposure without the added complexity associated with options. Cash settlement means traders would settle gains or losses in money rather than receive or deliver the stock itself.

CME is betting that the expansion of retail trading, along with a market environment marked by high-profile initial public offerings and limited share availability, will help the product gain traction. Single-stock futures were introduced in the U.S. 24 years ago but failed to develop a durable market at the time.

“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. McCourt said the exchange is aiming the product at retail traders, with more than 35 retail intermediaries lined up to help distribute the futures, as well as institutional investors such as asset managers, who could use the contracts as another risk-management tool.

Single-stock futures differ from options because they offer leverage without requiring traders to understand concepts such as the Greeks, the variables that measure how changes in stock prices, volatility, time and interest rates affect derivatives pricing. As with other futures, that leverage can reduce the upfront capital needed for exposure, but it can also magnify losses if the position moves against the trader.

One potential use case is providing long or short exposure to stocks where available inventory is limited, as seen recently in SpaceX’s initial public offering. Investors who did not receive an allocation in a sought-after listing could use futures to add exposure in a more capital-efficient way.

Martin Franchi, chief executive officer of futures broker NinjaTrader, said the contracts’ relative simplicity compared with options may make them appealing to retail traders, who often prefer instruments they understand.

“There could be someone who’s perhaps too confused by all the Greeks and everything, and says this is just a simpler way,” Franchi said. “With the retail participation in markets today, a lot of things are just going to be different about single-stock futures this time.”

The launch comes at a sensitive point for CME. The Iran war has provided a tailwind for Intercontinental Exchange Inc.’s Brent oil complex relative to CME’s West Texas Intermediate futures franchise. At the same time, trading volume has been expanding on offshore derivatives exchanges such as Hyperliquid Strategies Inc., while Kalshi Inc. and Polymarket have become dominant players in emerging prediction markets.

Longer Trading Hours

CME’s single-stock futures will trade five days a week, 23 hours a day, extending beyond the standard 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. schedule for U.S. equity markets. The quarterly contracts will be offered in two sizes. The larger contracts, 55 of which will be introduced, will be based on 100 shares of stock, similar to standard options contracts. CME will also list 22 micro futures based on 10 shares each.

The micro contracts will include the Mag7 technology companies, along with 15 other names such as Micron Technology Inc., Pfizer Inc. and Walmart Inc. The smaller contract size is intended to make position sizing more flexible for traders who do not want exposure equivalent to 100 shares.

Futures are widely used around the world on equity indexes and commodities, but single-stock futures have had an uneven history in the U.S. The contracts were banned for nearly two decades until a 2000 accord established a framework for regulatory supervision, and trading rules were approved in 2002. They launched later that year but failed to attract sustained interest and eventually disappeared in 2020.

After that, regulators reduced the minimum amount of money investors might need to trade single-stock futures in an effort to revive the market. CME also needed approval from both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission before launching the new contracts.

“When we introduced them the first time, they failed miserably,” CME Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Terry Duffy said on the company’s quarterly earnings call on July 22. “The world has evolved since 2000.”

International Use Cases

In markets such as India, where futures on individual stocks are widely used, the contracts serve several purposes. Traders use them to take leveraged directional positions, hedge equity portfolios and pursue arbitrage opportunities. They also underpin arbitrage funds, which buy the underlying shares and sell the futures to capture the premium between the two instruments.

In Europe, financial institutions use single-stock futures to improve balance sheet efficiency, particularly around quarter-end and year-end regulatory reporting periods. They are also used to manage long positions and hedge short-position and net dividend risk, according to Jeremy Cohen, global head of derivatives broker Stellar Securities.

The new CME contracts will also carry risks, as with any financial instrument. Mat Cashman, principal for investor education at the Options Clearing Corp., noted that trading outside normal market hours can be uneven, including during the volatile minutes after companies report earnings.

Commissions are another consideration. In stock and options trading, many retail platforms charge no direct fees to traders and instead receive payment for order flow from market makers. By contrast, retail traders in futures markets generally pay commissions.

Stuart Kaiser, head of U.S. equity-trading strategy at Citigroup Inc., said the success of the product may depend heavily on the firms that make trading available to customers.

“Retail has gotten into the habit of using call options to source their leverage — or levered ETFs,” Kaiser said. “For futures to break into that — it’ll probably have to come from a push from the discount brokers to offer that product and allow them to trade it.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.