By Robb M. Stewart
Intercontinental Exchange will launch its first economic indicator futures contracts tied to global monetary policy decisions and U.S. natural gas storage reports.
The cash-settled futures contracts will offer investors exchange-traded and centrally-cleared instruments that will allow them to take a view on specific economic events and decisions, the data services and financial technology company said.
The expansion into economic indicator contracts reflects demand for regulated onshore products that allow customers to take positions on economically-relevant risks, it said.
ICE's new futures will be based on central bank rate decisions from the U.S. Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and Bank of England, providing exposure to scheduled policy meetings, as well as on U.S. natural gas storage inventory levels that are published weekly by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The new contracts are scheduled to launch Aug. 10, subject to the completion of relevant regulatory processes, ICE said.
The new contracts come on the heels of the recent launch of ICE's Polymarket Signals and Sentiment service, a prediction data and analytics offering that provides normalized data feeds representing Polymarket's prediction markets and crowd-sourced probability assessments.
Write to Robb M. Stewart at robb.stewart@wsj.com