(June 29): Intercontinental Exchange Inc, owner of the New York Stock Exchange, is adding new futures contracts tied to global monetary-policy decisions and US natural gas storage as another way for investors to hedge their exposure to economic events.

ICE plans to list futures based on central bank rate decisions from the Federal Reserve System, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England, according to company executives. It’s targeting an Aug 10 launch for the economic-indicator products, subject to regulatory approval.

The goal is to provide investors with exposure to scheduled policy meetings across the three biggest central banks in the world, in addition to natural gas storage inventory levels in the US, which are published weekly by the US Energy Information Administration.

“We want to test institutional demand around contracts that don’t look like our traditional, existing products,” Trabue Bland, ICE’s senior vice-president of futures markets, said in an interview. “They are close to them but they have more of a binary outcome,” like whether a central bank will raise interest rates or not, he said.

The cash-settled futures contracts are designed to give investors exchange-traded and centrally cleared instruments to bet on economic events, according to the company.

Exchanges in the US and abroad are racing to list products that give investors new ways to hedge risks, including price swings and economic uncertainty. At the same time, prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket offer binary yes-or-no contracts that allow users to place bets on events.

ICE has its own partnership with Polymarket after it invested US$1.6 billion (RM65.14 billion) in the company. That deal gave ICE exposure to the fast-growing industry despite blowback from US lawmakers, who have expressed concern that the platforms are vulnerable to insider trading and manipulation.

While most of the activity in prediction markets is still concentrated in sports, operators are pushing their economic-linked contracts in a broader appeal to both institutional and retail investors. Options exchange Cboe Global Markets Inc said last week it brought back a type of S&P 500 contract after a hiatus of more than a decade. Nasdaq Inc also has regulatory approval to launch binary index options contracts, which are expected to list later this year.

Bland said that, although the new futures contracts have a binary outcome, they’re not meant to replicate prediction markets. They will be a part of the current, regulated infrastructure at ICE’s exchange, and the hope is they will complement the company’s existing investing products, he said.

“It’s just another tool that we’re going to put in the tool box,” Bland said.

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