Interactive Brokers Extends Forecast Contracts Trading Hours

Interactive Brokers extends trading hours for Forecast Contracts, enabling nearly 24/5 access to event-based markets.

Key Points:

• Forecast Contracts now trade nearly 24 hours a day, Sunday through Friday, across IBKR platforms.
• IBKR avoids sports-related contracts, unlike Robinhood, maintaining regulatory distance from sports betting.

Interactive Brokers (NASDAQ: IBKR) has announced the expansion of trading hours for its Forecast Contracts, allowing eligible clients to trade the innovative instruments nearly 24 hours a day, from Sunday through Friday.

Forecast Contracts—also known as Event Contracts and categorized as binary option products—let investors take simple, low-cost positions on the outcomes of major economic, government, and environmental events. Examples include questions such as, “Will the United States economy enter a recession by the end of Q2 2025?” Clients can buy “Yes” or “No” positions, which settle at $1.00 if correct or $0.00 if incorrect, with prices ranging between $0.02 and $0.99 based on market probability.

Interactive Brokers Extends Forecast Contracts Trading Hours

The move to extend trading hours reflects the increasingly global and round-the-clock nature of financial markets. “Today’s markets react instantly to events happening across geographies and time zones,” said Steve Sanders, EVP of Marketing and Product Development at Interactive Brokers. “By extending trading hours for Forecast Contracts, we’re offering clients the flexibility to act on critical market developments as they unfold, regardless of when they happen.”

Forecast Contracts are accessible on several IBKR platforms, including IBKR Mobile, Desktop, Trader Workstation (TWS), the Client Portal, and the dedicated IBKR ForecastTrader platform. The contracts are offered by ForecastEx LLC, a CFTC-regulated, wholly owned subsidiary of Interactive Brokers, and are currently available to eligible clients in the U.S., Canada, and Hong Kong.

While some competitors are venturing into riskier territory, Interactive Brokers is deliberately steering clear of sports-related Forecast Contracts. Rival Robinhood (NASDAQ: HOOD) has begun offering Event Contracts tied to sports events, a move that blurs the line between financial speculation and sports betting. Earlier this year, Robinhood pulled a proposed Super Bowl Event Contract after facing regulatory pressure from both financial and gaming authorities.

Interactive Brokers’ conservative stance may serve to insulate it from potential regulatory entanglements, while still capitalizing on the growing demand for fast, flexible event-driven trading tools.

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