For CME Group, 2026 is the year the US Treasury market’s long-promised structural shift moves from anticipation to execution.
“The US Treasury market is the deepest and most liquid in the world, but it is also in the middle of its most significant structural shift in decades,” says Matthew Gierke, global head of BrokerTec. “The combination of record issuance, the SEC’s clearing mandate, and the push toward greater capital efficiency is reshaping how every participant interacts with this market.”
“Our clients don’t want to manage their Treasury exposure in silos anymore,” he continues. “They want a single ecosystem where cash, futures, repo, and swaps work together, and where clearing is connected to execution.” CME Group currently offers over US$31 billion in margin savings across the interest rates products it clears, including US$12.5 billion through the portfolio margining programme between CME Group’s interest rates futures and options and interest rates swaps.
The clearing mandate lands
The cash US Treasury and repo market is undergoing a historic shift as the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) central clearing mandate approaches its final implementation phases, with the cash Treasury transactions deadline falling on 31 December 2026 and repo transactions coming into effect on 30 June 2027.
As the largest cash treasury and repo platform in the market, BrokerTec says it is at the epicentre of this transition, with clients already clearing through the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation’s (DTCC’s) Fixed Income Clearing Corporation (FICC) in the US. Gierke notes that the firm is deeply engaged with buy side and sell side clients to help them navigate these new clearing opportunities, partnering with them to deliver expanded connectivity where required.
CME Securities Clearing goes live
The centrepiece of CME Group’s clearing response is CME Securities Clearing, which launches on 7 December (pending regulatory review) to expand clearing capacity, choice, and capital efficiency in the US Treasury market.
Announced on 10 September, the new SEC-registered clearing agency will provide a capital-efficient option to clear US Treasury cash and repo transactions and comply with the SEC’s central clearing mandate. It will support both ‘done-with’ and ‘done-away’ execution and clearing, allowing clearing members and independent users to optimise capital efficiencies across cash Treasuries, repo, and CME Group interest rate futures. Eligible firms will be able to offset margin across both clearing houses, reducing margin requirements, freeing up capital, and improving liquidity.
“With US debt reaching a record US$40 trillion and the clearing mandate months away, the US Treasury market is undergoing the biggest transformation in a generation,” says Terry Duffy, CME Group chairman and CEO. “Along with our existing cross-margining arrangement with FICC, which already produces over US$2.5 billion in daily margin savings, CME Securities Clearing will provide another capital-efficient clearing option precisely when the market needs it most.”
“This launch is the culmination of years of preparation and a natural extension of CME Group’s expertise in clearing interest rate risk,” adds Suzanne Sprague, CME Group chief operating officer and global head of Clearing and Post-Trade Services. “By offering cross-margining between both CME Group clearing houses, as well as between CME Clearing and FICC, we will ensure that eligible firms have multiple avenues to secure the capital efficiencies that come from offsetting cash and futures positions.”
The new clearing house complements CME Group’s existing cross-margining agreement with FICC, which is now available to both house and client accounts. The programme reached a record US$2.67 billion in daily savings in September, with 13 firms having signed agreements to participate in the programme for customers and 24 firms for house. Its key features are built around three pillars: capital efficiency, multiple clearing methods, and flexible execution to configure positions for margin optimisation.
Treasury Link: Connecting cash and futures in one trade
While CME Securities Clearing tackles the clearing layer, Treasury Link addresses the execution one, and it is where CME Group’s cash-and-futures convergence strategy comes fully into focus.
Announced in July, Treasury Link is an industry-first functionality designed to connect the world’s largest US Treasury futures and cash liquidity pools. The service will enable transparent, centralised spread trading between CBOT Treasury futures and BrokerTec cash Treasuries on CME Globex, and is expected to launch in the fourth quarter of 2026, pending regulatory review.
“Treasury Link will allow market participants to transact the differential between futures and cash markets via a single submission. That eliminates legging risk and lets clients manage their exposure through a single spread for the first time, a meaningful shift for relative-value traders who have historically had to leg into each side of the trade separately,” says Gierke.
For Reed Staub, head of NA Futures Execution at Morgan Stanley, the introduction of Treasury Link removes a significant variable, legging risk, from the equation, and represents a major leap forward in market structure efficiency.
Treasury Link builds directly on BrokerTec Chicago, a second BrokerTec central limit order book (CLOB) targeting relative-value traders. Co-located in the Aurora data centre next to CME Group’s US Treasury futures and options market, the platform reached a single-day volume record of US$1.22 billion on 8 April 2026. Together, the two venues form the connective tissue between the cash and futures Treasury markets, one bringing the order books into physical proximity, the other letting participants trade the spread in a single action.
Repo: From back-office utility to strategic centre
The global repo market has transformed from a back-office utility into the strategic heart of price discovery, driven by record US Treasury issuance and the sweeping arrival of mandatory central clearing. At the centre of this modern financial engine are BrokerTec’s leading dealer-to-dealer (D2D) CLOBs and its rapidly expanding BrokerTec Quote platform.
Together, these venues provide the critical liquidity pools needed to navigate tighter bank balance sheets and elevated capital constraints, the firm says. By centralising primary dealer liquidity on firm, executable order books, the D2D CLOB anchors continuous price discovery and tightens spreads, allowing firms to absorb collateral flows with minimal market impact.
Complementing this central order flow, BrokerTec Quote extends execution efficiency into relationship-driven trading, giving market participants the flexibility to calibrate their activity precisely against strict Basel III/IV, global systemically important bank (G-SIB), and Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR) capital standards.
As stricter margin rules for swaps and XVA desks turn repo into a vital conduit for collateral movement, these integrated platforms allow traders to seamlessly source pricing across a broader counterparty set. Treasury Link will further minimise legging risk by executing linked cash, repo, and futures strategies simultaneously, eliminating execution slippage at a time when rapid rate shifts directly impact the bottom line.
Crucially, as regulatory mandates push the ecosystem toward cleared, auditable execution, BrokerTec bridges front-end trading directly with CME Group’s clearing and netting infrastructure. Trades executed across both CLOB and quote-driven protocols flow through straight-through processing into central clearing venues, optimising margin and freeing up balance sheet capacity.
The firm says this tight coupling allows participants to transition from selecting the cheapest-to-deliver bond to executing the most operationally efficient collateral transfer in a single, unified workflow, establishing a modern, digital backbone for global funding markets.
Image: Matthew Gierke 