# ForecastEx

Economic and climate contracts on a CFTC exchange that pays interest on your collateral.

*https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/forecastex · Prediction Market Venues*

## Facts

### At a glance

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Vendor | ForecastEx |
| Category | Prediction Market Venues |
| Job | event_trading |
| Website | https://forecastex.com |
| Pricing model | commission |
| Free tier | false |
| Open source | false |
| Licence | none |
| Self-hosted | false |
| Tested hands-on | false |
| Last updated | 2026-09-19 |

### Availability

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Jurisdictions | us, ca, eu, asia |
| Open to US persons | true |
| KYC required | true |

### Markets

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Subjects | macro, politics, science, business |
| Settlement | cash |
| Resolved by | The source agency named in each contract's own terms-and-conditions document — and the initial release only, since later revisions to the same statistic do not change the outcome. |

### Economics

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Taker fee | 1 |
| Maker fee | 1 |
| Liquidity model | clob |
| Platforms | web |
| AI features | none |

### Interfaces

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| API | false |
| WebSocket | false |
| Scripting | none |
| Python | false |
| MCP server | false |
| Export | none |

### Capabilities

Yes: order_book, live_trading

No: charting, screening, backtesting, automation, paper_trading, portfolio_tracking, calibration_scoring, cross_venue, alerts, news, tax_reporting

*Verified: pricing 2026-09-19; availability 2026-09-19.*

## What it is

ForecastEx is a CFTC-designated contract market **and** a registered derivatives clearing
organization — it lists the contracts and clears them itself. The CFTC issued both orders
together, announced on 25 June 2024, with the designated-contract-market date recorded as 24 June
2024. Operations **started on 1 August 2024**, per Interactive Brokers' own press release; an
earlier release had announced 8 July 2024, and that date slipped. US election contracts followed
on 3 October 2024.

**The vendor on this card is ForecastEx and not Interactive Brokers**, because ForecastEx is who
holds the CFTC registrations, publishes the rulebook and fee schedule, and signs the contract
you enter into. Interactive Brokers Group owns it outright — the parent is a fact about the
company, not about the product, and most readers will reach the product through IBKR's own
ForecastTrader platform.

**The mechanism is genuinely unusual and the reason this card exists.** A Forecast Contract pays
$1.00 to the winning side and $0.00 to the losing side. You do not buy from a seller. You submit
a **bid, between $0.01 and $0.99, for either the Yes position or the No position**, prioritised
by price-time priority; when the combined Yes and No bids reach $1.00, the exchange pairs them
and — in the rulebook's own words — the Yes bidder executes a contract with ForecastEx and the No
bidder executes a contract with ForecastEx. Everything is fully collateralised: each side posts
cash equal to what it bid. So the counterparty is the exchange, funded by the person whose
opposite bid completed yours.

One consequence follows and it is the product's real differentiator: because the collateral sits
in cash at the clearing house, it earns interest, and the rulebook requires that interest to come
back. See **Pricing**.

Conditional contracts add a third outcome — where the condition does not occur, the contract
resolves "False" and each side gets its consideration back, less transaction fees.

## Availability

**You cannot have an account with ForecastEx.** Rule 301 states that membership is not offered
for the personal accounts of natural persons, and Rule 304 routes everyone else through a futures
commission merchant. This is the first practical fact about availability and it is the one most
descriptions miss.

**Three FCM members are listed on ForecastEx's own members page on 19 September 2026 —
Interactive Brokers, Robinhood and Advantage Futures.** The common description of ForecastEx as
an Interactive Brokers-only venue is out of date; [Robinhood](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/robinhood-prediction-markets)
routes some of its event-contract flow here.

**Non-US access exists, and it is narrower than the FCM list suggests.** Interactive Brokers'
ForecastTrader disclosures state that event contracts are available only to eligible clients aged
**21 or older** of Interactive Brokers LLC, Interactive Brokers Canada Inc., Interactive Brokers
Hong Kong Limited, Interactive Brokers Ireland Limited and Interactive Brokers Singapore Pte.
Ltd., and that availability varies by IBKR affiliate and country of residence. Canada opened on
1 April 2025 and the European expansion followed on 30 July 2025.

**One contract type carves out by residency rather than by country.** IBKR's own disclosure is
explicit — ForecastEx contracts on US election results are available only to eligible US
residents. That is a per-contract restriction inside an otherwise served jurisdiction, which is
a different shape of block from a geoblock or a declined signup.

So the restriction here is not an IP filter and not a checkbox. **It is an eligibility test run
by your broker at account level**, under that broker's own onboarding, in whichever jurisdiction
that broker's entity is licensed. KYC is therefore whatever the FCM requires, and for a futures
account that is identity, address and suitability. Note the age floor differs by route — 21
through Interactive Brokers, 18 through Robinhood.

## Pricing

**Transaction fee — $0.01 per contract, per side**, charged at execution, from ForecastEx's own
fee schedule. It is charged to both the Yes and the No side of each executed transaction, and it
is independent of resolution, netting and settlement. On a contract that pays out at $1.00, a
cent is a full 1% of the maximum payout, which is why this card's fee fields read 1. Unlike
[Kalshi](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/kalshi) and [Polymarket](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket), where the charge is a coefficient
applied to price, here the cent is absolute — so 1% is the rate at every price, not just at the
midpoint.

**How that changed, and why an older description is wrong.** Until 31 March 2026 the exchange
paired bids at a combined **$1.01** and kept the extra cent as embedded fee income, collected at
resolution. A CFTC self-certification dated 2 March 2026 moved the pairing threshold to $1.00
effective 31 March 2026 at 16:15 CT and made the cent an explicit transaction fee charged at
execution instead. Anything describing the embedded-fee mechanism is stale.

**The Incentive Coupon is the part that has no equivalent elsewhere in this category.** Rule
612(c) requires the clearing house to pass all interest it earns on monies in collateral
accounts, less fees, to members as a **monthly coupon payment**, and permits an FCM member to
pass some or all of it to their customers. Interactive Brokers' ForecastTrader page quoted a rate
of **3.38% APY, accruing daily and paid monthly**, on 19 September 2026, and states that rates
are subject to change. Treat that as a dated observation and not a property of the product: the
rule is durable, the number is not, and whether you see any of it depends on your FCM.

There are also a Member Volume Incentive Program and a Market Maker Program, which are rebate
schemes for members rather than retail pricing.

## Markets & resolution

**No sports — as policy, not as a rule.** Rule 401(b) names economic, business, environmental,
legislative or social events **and then "any other event that the Exchange chooses"**, excluding
only what the CFTC prohibits, so the rulebook does not forbid sports; the practice does. The live
listing bears that out — US initial jobless claims, the
unemployment rate, retail sales, building permits, payroll employment, CPI, the Fed funds target
rate, housing starts, real GDP, corporate profits, the national debt, global temperature, plus US
elections and financial-market questions. This is the sharpest contrast in the category with the
venues where sports is the majority of the volume.

**Resolution is per-contract and published in advance.** Each contract has its own
terms-and-conditions document naming a source agency and a resolution time. The building-permits
contract, for instance, names the US Census Bureau and resolves at 07:00 CT on publication —
and states explicitly that **only the initial release counts, and later revisions do not affect
the outcome**. That sentence is worth reading twice, because revisions to US macroeconomic series
are routine and can be large; a position that was right about the revised figure and wrong about
the first print loses.

That arrangement removes almost all of the ambiguity that dogs resolution elsewhere. There is no
oracle, no token-holder vote and no discretionary read of a news story — but equally there is no
dispute window, and the initial-release rule means the contract can settle against a number that
the source agency itself later says was wrong.

The rulebook we read carries a version date of 17 September 2026.

## Integrations

**ForecastEx publishes no public API, no WebSocket feed and no SDK**, and there is no ForecastEx
app or ForecastEx account. Access is whatever the FCM provides.

Through Interactive Brokers that is ForecastTrader, a web platform for forecast contracts and
event contracts on selected CME futures, with positions also visible inside IBKR's main platforms
under consolidated reporting; IBKR's ScaleTrader algorithm works on ForecastEx contracts, and
since 14 May 2026 IBKR has offered a unified prediction-markets interface across Kalshi, CME
Group and ForecastEx with routing to the best net price. Through
[Robinhood](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/robinhood-prediction-markets) it is the Robinhood mobile app.

## Limitations

- **You cannot open an account directly.** The rulebook bars individuals from membership, so the
  venue is only as available as your broker is, and the broker sets the KYC, the age floor and
  the platform.
- **No API, no automation of its own, no data export.** Anything programmatic runs through the
  FCM's interface.
- **Only the initial release counts.** A contract on a revised statistic settles against the
  first print, which is a real and under-advertised risk on macroeconomic series.
- **No dispute mechanism.** Resolution is mechanical against a named source, which is clean until
  the source itself is late, restated or ambiguous.
- **The widely repeated claim that cumulative notional volume passed $1 billion by January 2026
  has no primary source we could find** — not in any Interactive Brokers press release, not in a
  ForecastEx announcement and not in an SEC filing. It is not on this card. The only volume
  milestone IBKR published for this product is more than 1,000,000 election forecast contracts
  traded, in late 2024.
- **The Incentive Coupon rate moves and may not reach you.** 3.38% APY was the quoted rate on
  19 September 2026; the rulebook obliges the clearing house to pass interest to *members*, and
  only permits the FCM to pass it on to you.
- **Nobody here has funded an account.** Everything above is read from the ForecastEx rulebook,
  fee schedule, contract terms and members page, from CFTC orders and filings, and from
  Interactive Brokers' own disclosures, on 19 September 2026.

## Alternatives

[Kalshi](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/kalshi) is the obvious comparison for the same macro contracts, with an API, a
direct account and no interest on collateral. [Polymarket](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket) lists far more and
resolves quite differently. [Robinhood Prediction Markets](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/robinhood-prediction-markets)
is one of the three routes into this exchange, and it is the one with a mobile app.

## FAQ

### Do I need an Interactive Brokers account to trade on ForecastEx?

No, not any more. ForecastEx's rulebook bars individuals from direct membership, so access is always through a futures commission merchant, and three are listed as members on 19 September 2026 — Interactive Brokers, Robinhood and Advantage Futures.

### Why does ForecastEx pay interest on an open position?

Because every position is fully collateralised in cash held at its clearing house. Rule 612(c) requires the clearing house to pass the interest it earns on collateral accounts, less fees, to members as a monthly coupon, and a broker may pass some or all of that on. Interactive Brokers quoted 3.38% APY on 19 September 2026; the rate moves.

### Who takes the other side of a ForecastEx trade?

The exchange does. You bid between 1 and 99 cents for the Yes side or the No side, and when a Yes bid and a No bid add up to a dollar, ForecastEx pairs them and enters into a contract with each side separately. There is no seller in the usual sense and no market maker quoting you a price.

### Does ForecastEx list sports contracts?

No. The live listing is macroeconomic releases, Fed policy, climate indicators and US elections, and Interactive Brokers said on its Q2 2026 call that it still does not offer sports. The rulebook does not bar them, though — Rule 401(b) names economic, business, environmental, legislative and social events and then adds "or any other event that the Exchange chooses". This is the cleanest contrast in the category with the sports-heavy venues.

## Background

- [What a prediction market is, and how one works](https://predictionmarkets.tools/guides/what-a-prediction-market-is.md) — A contract that pays one dollar if a stated event happens. What you buy, who takes the other side, who decides, and when the cents stop meaning a probability.
- [What you have to prove about yourself to trade](https://predictionmarkets.tools/guides/what-you-have-to-prove-to-trade.md) — A connected wallet is not an identity check. Which venues ask for what, at which step of the way in, and what you give up on the ones that never ask.
- [What your money does between the trade and the resolution](https://predictionmarkets.tools/guides/what-your-money-does-while-you-wait.md) — An event contract is fully collateralised, so the position is the cash. What that cash does while you wait, who earns interest on it, and how to annualise it.

## Also worth comparing

- [Crypto.com Prediction](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/crypto-com-prediction-markets.md) — Event contracts on a CFTC-designated exchange, traded from inside the Crypto.com app.
- [Kalshi](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/kalshi.md) — A CFTC-designated exchange for event contracts, settled in dollars against named sources.
- [Polymarket US](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-us.md) — Polymarket's CFTC-designated US exchange — dollars, KYC, and no on-chain oracle.
- [Robinhood Prediction Markets](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/robinhood-prediction-markets.md) — Event contracts in the Robinhood app, routed to three exchanges — one of them its own JV.
- [Futuur](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/futuur.md) — Play-money and real-money markets side by side, priced by an LS-LMSR market maker.
- [Limitless](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/limitless.md) — Event contracts on Base, collateralised in USDC, traded on a central limit order book.

## Named as a replacement for

- [Kalshi](https://predictionmarkets.tools/alternatives/kalshi-alternatives.md)
- [Polymarket](https://predictionmarkets.tools/alternatives/polymarket-alternatives.md)