CME Group Inc - Ordinary Shares - Class A

Strong Q2 financial/performance momentum (good): - Revenue: >$1.7B, +1% YoY and a record for Q2 (2nd-highest all-time quarterly behind Q1’26). - Market data revenue: +$238M, +20% YoY, with 33 consecutive quarters of YoY market data growth and 8 consecutive quarters of record. - Adjusted profitability: Adjusted operating income ~$1.2B; adjusted operating margin 69.5%. - EPS: Adjusted diluted EPS ~$2.99, +1% vs Q2’25 (adjusted net income margin 63.4%). - Capital returned: $1.2B to shareholders in the quarter ($468M dividends + $695M share repurchases).

Volumes/open interest & capital-efficiency highlights (good, with clear demand signal): - Q2 average daily volume (ADV): 29.8M contracts = 2nd-highest Q2 in CME history, within 1% of last year’s record Q2 (notably May/June strong after a tougher April comparison). - Open interest: +8% YoY and +16% since start of year. - Capital efficiency claim: CME delivered record customer margin savings—> $95B per day on average. - H1’26 and near-term read-through: H1 volume 10% ahead of last year; revenue +8%, adjusted EPS +10%. July-to-date volume +18% YoY.

Perpetual futures debate: CME position is “no demand from core customers” (bad/surprising but clarifying): - Management argued perpetual futures aren’t appropriate for institutional hedging (CME claims 94% of volume is institutional in H1’26). - Claims that perpetuals: rely on frequent funding-rate adjustments, have high leverage/auto-liquidations, provide limited protections, and are far more expensive when considering transaction fee + daily funding cost vs CME futures. - Customer-demand takeaway (key investor signal): CEO said they’re hearing no real institutional demand and offered a specific example from a major energy participant saying they do not want perpetuals due to risk-management incompatibility.