I can't seem to find the thread that was discussing single stock futures, in any event, the following article in futures industry magazine may be of interest. http://www.futuresindustry.org/fimagazi-1929.asp?a=736
Single stock futures are expected to begin trading sometime in Q2. As far as IB offering them, I don't know why they wouldn't since the matching engine will be CBOE's screen-based trading system and Globex will have direct access to that system. The following are expected to trade at launch: American International Group (AIG) American Express (AXP) AOL Time Warner, Inc. (AOL) Applied Materials (AMAT) AT&T Corporation (T) Bank One (ONE) Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) Citigroup, Inc. (C) Dell Computer Corporation (DEL) eBay, Inc. (EBAY) EMC Corporation (EMC) General Electric Company (GE) Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS) Intel Corporation (INTC) International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM) Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. (MER) Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. (MWD) Motorola, Inc. (MOT) Nokia Corporation ADR (NOK) Oracle Corporation (ORCL) Pfizer (PFE) Philip Morris (MO) QUALCOMM, Inc. (QCOM) Sun Microsytems (SUNW) Siebel Systems, Inc. (SEBL) Texas Instruments Incorporated (TXN) VERITAS Software Corporation (VRTS)
Interesting. I see NYSE and Nasdaq stocks will be traded. I wonder how much liquidity there will be. And I wonder how the futures will move on these stocks. Will they be like the stocks themselves? Either thick like CSCO or more volitile like QCOM?
also check out http://www.nqlx.com/ No one's announced a firm launch date, however. The date most often mentioned is April, but my guess is no earlier than this June.