ForecastEx

What ForecastEx is, in one screen.

This page is general information, not financial, investment, legal, tax, or betting advice. Prediction markets and event contracts carry a real risk of loss, and a clear regulator does not change that. Verify the current rules and your eligibility before participating.

ForecastEx LLC is a CFTC registered Designated Contract Market and Derivatives Clearing Organization that began operating on 1 August 2024, per ForecastEx regulatory disclosures and the CFTC, as of June 2026. It lists Forecast Contracts, simple Yes or No claims on data releases such as inflation, jobs, and temperature, that pay USD 1.00 if correct and nothing if not. You cannot sign up at ForecastEx directly; you trade it through a Futures Commission Merchant, and for most readers that means an Interactive Brokers account.

How a Forecast Contract actually works.

A Forecast Contract is a claim on a future fact. You answer one question with Yes or No, for example whether US unemployment will exceed 4 percent at the next release, and you buy the side you believe. If your side is correct when the official data lands, each contract pays USD 1.00. If it is wrong, the contract settles at zero. That is the whole shape of the instrument, and it is why a contract price reads naturally as an implied probability rather than a tip. A Yes contract trading at 62 cents is the market pricing the outcome at roughly a 62 percent chance, no more and no less, per ForecastEx product documentation, as of June 2026.

ForecastEx builds this in an unusual way that is worth understanding before you trade. There are no sellers and no counterparties in the everyday sense. Yes and No are two separate contracts with their own prices, and you only ever buy. When a Yes buyer and a No buyer are matched, their two prices are designed to add up to settlement plus the fee, so the exchange and its clearinghouse stand between the two sides rather than pairing you against a single opponent, per ForecastEx, as of June 2026. Prices move in one cent steps and live between USD 0.01 and USD 0.99, so the cheapest a contract can trade is a penny and the dearest is ninety nine cents. The closer a price sits to a dollar, the more confident the market is that the answer is Yes.

Settlement, and the coupon that surprises people.

Settlement is mechanical. The contract is tied to a defined data release from a named source, and when that number prints, the market resolves to Yes or No against the threshold in the contract. Correct holders receive USD 1.00 per contract; incorrect holders receive nothing. ForecastEx ties its markets to releases from bodies such as the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the United States Census Bureau, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the University of Michigan, per ForecastEx, as of June 2026. Because the resolution source is a public agency rather than a judgement call, there is little room for dispute about the result, which is one reason the format suits economic and climate questions so well.

The feature that most surprises newcomers is the incentive coupon. ForecastEx pays an incentive coupon, calculated on the daily closing value of a contract you hold and paid monthly, whether or not your prediction turns out correct, per ForecastEx product documentation, as of June 2026. In plain terms, holding a position can earn a small ongoing income across the life of the contract, separate from whether it eventually settles at a dollar or at zero. This is a real and unusual design point, and it is the main thing that sets the venue apart from a plain binary market. It is not free money and it does not remove the risk of loss: you can still lose the price you paid if your side resolves wrong, and the coupon is modest. Treat it as a feature of the instrument, not as a reason to trade.

You can also exit before settlement. There is no selling on ForecastEx, so to close a position you buy the opposite contract, a Yes to close a No or a No to close a Yes, which locks in a result and ends the exposure, per ForecastEx, as of June 2026. The timeline below shows the path from open to close.

What it costs, set out plainly.

ForecastEx keeps its own pricing simple. The exchange charges USD 0.01 per contract per side, and that cent is shown inside the quoted price, so a matched Yes and No always total USD 1.01, with the extra penny being the fee, per ForecastEx, as of June 2026. The Interactive Brokers commission schedule lists the ForecastEx Forecast Contract line at USD 0.00 per contract as the broker commission, with a third party exchange fee of USD 0.01 per contract, per the Interactive Brokers commission schedule, as of June 2026. In practice you should budget one cent per contract per side as your trading cost on this venue, plus any account level fees your broker applies. The table below sets out the facts we verified.

Method: figures taken from the ForecastEx site and the Interactive Brokers commission schedule, read on 28 June 2026. Fees and terms can change; confirm the current schedule with your broker before trading.

What you can trade, and the data behind it.

ForecastEx is built around economic and climate questions, with some political markets, rather than the broad pop culture and sports menus you find on the largest consumer venues. Typical markets ask whether a coming inflation, jobs, growth, housing, or temperature figure will clear a stated threshold. Because each market is anchored to a scheduled government or institutional release, the calendar is predictable and the questions are concrete. For a reader who wants to express a view on the macro economy or on climate data with a defined payout, this focus is a strength, not a gap. For a reader who came for game outcomes or celebrity markets, it will feel thin, and that is the honest tradeoff.

One specific limit is worth stating clearly because it is easy to assume otherwise. Forecast Contracts on US election results are only available to eligible US residents, per the Interactive Brokers disclosure, as of June 2026. Availability of any given market also depends on your broker and your location, so the exact list you see can differ from another reader's.

How you get in, and who can use it.

This is the single most important practical point about ForecastEx: it is not a place you open an account directly. ForecastEx is the exchange and clearinghouse, and clients buy contracts through its designated Futures Commission Merchants, per ForecastEx, as of June 2026. For most readers that broker is Interactive Brokers, which is a CFTC registered Futures Commission Merchant and a clearing member and affiliate of ForecastEx LLC, per the Interactive Brokers disclosure, as of June 2026. Interactive Brokers surfaces the markets inside its IBKR ForecastTrader interface, and the same ForecastEx contracts are also reachable through Robinhood Prediction Markets, according to reputable reporting, as of June 2026.

Custody follows the brokerage model. Your money sits in your brokerage account under that firm's framework, contracts settle in US dollars, and getting funds in or out runs through the broker's normal deposit and withdrawal rails and identity checks rather than a separate wallet. That is a meaningful point in this category. It means the funds are held inside a long established, heavily regulated broker rather than on a lightly supervised app, which many readers will find reassuring. It also means the experience is a full trading platform, which is powerful but has a steeper learning curve than a single purpose prediction app.

What exchange and clearinghouse means for you.

Two pieces of regulatory language sit behind ForecastEx, and both matter to an ordinary reader once you translate them. A Designated Contract Market is a CFTC registered exchange, the venue where the contracts are listed and matched. A Derivatives Clearing Organization is a CFTC registered clearinghouse, the body that stands in the middle of every matched trade and guarantees the settlement. ForecastEx is both, per ForecastEx and the Interactive Brokers disclosure, as of June 2026. The reason this is worth your attention is the second role. When a clearinghouse stands between buyers, your payout does not depend on a particular opponent being good for the money; it depends on the clearing system, which is the same basic plumbing that underpins regulated futures markets. For a reader whose main fear in this category is whether a winning position will actually be paid, that structure is the most reassuring thing on the page.

It also explains the unusual no counterparty design. On a sportsbook you bet against the house, and the house sets the odds and keeps the edge. On a plain order book exchange you trade against another named participant. On ForecastEx you buy one of two separate contracts, Yes or No, and the exchange and clearinghouse organise the match so that the two sides and the penny fee fit together, per ForecastEx, as of June 2026. There is no house taking the other side of your view and no single opponent who has to settle with you directly. That is a meaningful distinction, and it is why describing these instruments as bets is imprecise: a price here is an implied probability set by participants, and the venue earns a small transparent fee rather than a bookmaker's margin.

Reading the price as a probability, in practice.

Because a contract pays a fixed dollar, its price carries information you can use directly. A Yes contract at 30 cents is the market saying the outcome looks roughly a 30 percent chance; a Yes at 85 cents is the market saying it looks close to settled. This is the single most useful habit to build on any prediction venue, and it applies cleanly here because the payout is a clean dollar and the fee is tiny. Two cautions keep it honest. First, the price reflects the views of the people trading, not a guarantee, and thin markets can price a probability poorly. Second, the gap between the Yes price and a dollar minus the No price is where the fee and the spread live, so the implied probability is approximate rather than exact. Used with those caveats, reading prices as probabilities turns a ForecastEx screen into a live read on what the market expects from the next data release, which is genuinely informative whether or not you ever place a trade.

Where ForecastEx sits among the regulated venues.

In a category where the central worry is whether a venue is properly supervised and whether you will actually be paid, ForecastEx scores well on the things that matter most. It runs its own exchange and its own clearinghouse under CFTC registration, and it settles through a major broker. That is about as solid a footing as exists in this space today. The honest counterweight is breadth and ease. The market list is narrower than Kalshi or Polymarket, the incentive coupon adds a layer to understand, and reaching the markets through a professional brokerage platform asks more of a beginner than a consumer app does. Readers comparing venues should weigh that focus and that footing against the wider menus elsewhere, and our side by side comparisons set those tradeoffs out market by market. None of this is a recommendation to trade; it is a description of what the venue is and is not.

A worked example, end to end.

Numbers make the mechanics concrete, so here is one drawn from the ForecastEx documentation, per ForecastEx, as of June 2026. Take a market asking whether US building permits will exceed 1,510,000. A reader who expects the figure to come in below that buys a No contract at 25 cents. A reader who expects it to come in above buys a Yes contract at 76 cents. Notice that the two prices do not have to sum to a dollar on their own; the matching and the penny fee are what tie the two sides together.

The Census Bureau then releases the number, and it prints at 1,522,000, above the threshold, so the market resolves to Yes. The Yes holder receives USD 1.00 at settlement. Against a price of 76 cents that is a gross gain of 24 cents, and after the one cent exchange fee the net is 23 cents, before any coupon. The No holder is wrong and the contract settles at zero, so that reader is out the 25 cent price plus the one cent fee, a loss of 26 cents before any coupon. Both readers earned monthly incentive coupons for as long as they held, which softens the loss a little for the No holder and adds a little for the Yes holder, but does not change who was right. The lesson to carry away is that the most you can