CME / Q3 2026

CME Group Inc.

Reported: October 21, 2026

Published forecast

2026-10-19T17:16:00.311343+00:00

Opus 5.5 High in Shortcut

Shortcut

3.01

Shortcut normalized EPS

+1.1% vs Street

Off by $0.01 per share

Street

2.98

Street normalized EPS

Frozen October 18 snapshot

Off by $0.04 per share

Real

3.02

Issuer adjusted diluted EPS

Shortcut win

Reported result · October 21 ↗ · Issuer adjusted diluted common EPS excludes the items in its GAAP-to-non-GAAP reconciliation, preserving the published two-class convention.

USD per diluted CME common share. Percentages use unrounded forecasts.

Model download

Explore the assumptions and calculations behind the forecast.

Open in Shortcut ↗Download XLSX ↓

Shortcut’s reasoning.

The asset-class volume and rate build forecasts $1.27bn of futures and options fees and $1.37bn of total clearing and transaction fees. Market data and other revenue bring total revenue to $1.72bn.

Forecast operating expenses of $577.3m produce operating income of $1.15bn. Net non-operating income is $202.3m, including the retained collateral-interest assumptions.

After $63m of adjustments and a 23.2% normalized tax rate, adjusted net income is $1.08bn. Diluted shares of 359.44m give normalized EPS of $3.0139164446907585 versus the frozen $2.98 Street estimate.

Rounded issuer volume inputs, the daily-versus-quarterly basis of the IRS preview and the July opening-share observation remain source limitations. No input has been scaled or retuned to remove those uncertainties.

On the record.

Reporting basis: Adjusted/CapIQ normalized diluted EPS, with issuer two-class allocation conventions retained
Forecast completed: 2026-10-19T15:54:20.112284+00:00
Published: 2026-10-19T17:16:00.311343+00:00

Model assumptions and review notes

Reported asset-class ADV inputs are rounded and sum23k above the rounded29.4m issuer total. Clearing-fee forecasts retain that source precision.
FY25 amortization differs by$0.1m between the reported income-statement expense and adjustment bridge. Both source tables are preserved.
The 3Q26 OTC interest-rate activity forecast applies a daily trading-day conversion to a cached preview that does not establish daily-versus-quarter-total basis; this source uncertainty is retained.
The opening share balance uses a July8 filing-cover observation, and dividend cash is approximated using weighted basic shares. Timing limitations are retained.
Some model checks are identities and do not independently validate assumptions. Some Cover labels clip, Sources text abuts, and Inputs alignment and a FY25 RPC citation remain imperfect.
Gross profit and certain ancillary metrics are unavailable or explicitly labeled tracking proxies. The experimental probability prior and judgmental overlay are not EPS multipliers.
The license-fee assumption is20.35c per contract, while the cell display rounds to20.4c; its note preserves the precise input. Some tiny changes display0.0. Downloads retain full cached numeric precision.
Basic and diluted income use the issuer's two-class and preferred-share allocation conventions; the1Q26 basic numerator1168.0 is explicitly reported even though total NI is1154.3.

Research sources