Regulators Back Idea of Stock Futures Stock-obsessed Americans may soon have a new financial product to buy and sell: futures contracts on individual stocks.

The push to approve single-stock futures got a boost Monday with endorsements at a U.S. Senate hearing by federal regulators and the heads of Chicago's big financial exchanges - eager to offer anything that might help fend off the threat from upstart electronic challengers.

If a dwindling number of regulatory issues are settled, according to officials tracking the matter, single-stock futures could be put to a vote in Congress before its October adjournment.

"I was cautiously optimistic before the hearing, and I'm even more optimistic now." William Rainer, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates the futures industry, told reporters.

U.S. markets currently trade in stocks, stock options and futures, including futures contracts on broad-based stock-index options.

A futures contract on a stock would obligate the holder to buy or sell the security of a company, for example Apple Computer, at a specified future date and price, although it likely would most often be settled in cash based on the stock price.

An option, on the other hand, gives the buyer the right but not the obligation to buy or sell at a certain time and price.

Las Vegas Review-Journal May 9, 2000 page 10D

-- Lynn Ratcliffe (mcgrew@ntr.net), May 09, 2000

Answers

This was in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. How very appropriate. "Stock-obsessed Americans" (aka "gambling addicts") may get a new game to play. Grab that 401(k) money and place your bets, friends.

-- DeeEmBee (macbeth1@pacbell.net), May 09, 2000.