Pepperstone Expands Perpetual CFD Suite Beyond SpaceX to Metals, Indices and Oil

Pepperstone said today (Monday) it will extend its perpetual CFD range beyond a single SpaceX contract into metals, stock indices and energy, building trading products with no fixed expiry around the pitch of round-the-clock markets. Only the SpaceX contract trades today, with gold, silver, Nasdaq, S&P 500, WTI and Brent Crude versions listed as planned. Perpetual contracts carry no settlement date and use a periodic funding payment to keep their price close to the underlying market. The structure began in crypto, where perpetual swaps became the dominant way to trade digital assets, and it is now being repackaged for traditional CFDs referencing shares, metals and commodities.

Pepperstone has one perpetual CFD live, SPCX.US-PERP, a synthetic contract tracking the price of SpaceX. The metals, index and energy contracts it named on Monday were described as planned, not yet available, and the company did not give launch dates for them. The broker cited industry estimates to frame the demand, putting perpetual futures volumes above $90 trillion in 2025 and suggesting tokenized assets could grow from about $2 trillion today to as much as $16 trillion by 2030. Both figures came from Pepperstone, which did not detail the sources or methodology behind them. Its products are CFDs that reference an asset rather than the perpetual futures listed on crypto exchanges, with traders taking exposure through a standard trading account, without the wallets, exchange collateral or separate onboarding that venue-based perpetuals require, the company said.

The framing of perpetuals as a new frontier runs into rules that are already written. European regulators have told firms that perpetual futures fall under EU CFD rules, meaning the leverage caps and product-intervention measures that govern retail CFDs apply to them too. In markets covered by those measures, wrapping perpetual mechanics in a CFD does not sidestep the retail limits that cut crypto leverage toward 2x; it brings the product inside them. The announcement itself carried a narrow regulatory footnote. Issued from Dubai, it listed oversight by ASIC, the FCA, the DFSA, BaFin and CySEC among seven regulators, while the disclaimer at the foot cited only a UAE Capital Market Authority licence for introduction and financial consultation.

Tamas Szabo, Pepperstone's group chief executive, said fixed trading hours were becoming outdated and that "we believe perpetual markets will become a standard feature of modern finance." Round-the-clock access has become a crowded selling point across retail brokers, and SpaceX has been the product most of them reached for first. CMC Markets and Binance raced to put SpaceX in retail hands on the same day, one through a CFD and the other through a token, while Pepperstone built its version as a perpetual. Pepperstone had already moved in this direction, rolling out 24-hour trading on US share CFDs across its platforms, and has also pushed into digital assets directly, launching a dedicated crypto exchange in Australia. Chris Weston, the broker's head of research, tied the shift to the pace of information, saying "major market-moving developments no longer wait for opening bells." For now the round-the-clock suite rests on one contract. Pepperstone has attached no launch dates to the metals, index and energy perpetuals, and the funding model it uses on the SpaceX product settles once a day rather than continuously, according to the broker's product materials.