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If someone told you a hammer and a scalpel were basically the same tool because they’re both made of metal, you’d probably back away slowly. That’s roughly how Cboe’s Market Intelligence team feels about the growing tendency to lump perpetual futures and zero-days-to-expiration (0DTE) options into the same bucket.
The exchange operator released a research paper on July 14, 2026, titled “Crossed Wires: Separating Perception from Reality,” and its central argument is blunt: these two instruments are fundamentally different in structure, risk profile, and real-world application.
The CFTC catalyst
The paper arrives with pointed timing. On May 29, 2026, the CFTC approved Kalshi’s Bitcoin perpetual futures contracts, a milestone that brought crypto-native perpetual futures into the regulated US derivatives landscape for the first time. Around that approval, CFTC Chair Selig reportedly suggested that perpetual futures and 0DTE options share enough similarities to be considered comparable products.
Cboe’s report is, in essence, a polite but thorough rebuttal of that framing.
Perpetual futures carry a linear payoff structure. If the underlying asset moves 5% against your position, you lose 5% of your notional exposure. There’s no expiration date, no natural stopping point. Risk runs in both directions with no ceiling and no floor.
0DTE options, by contrast, expire within a single trading day and offer what the industry calls “capped risk.” A buyer of a put option can never lose more than the premium paid. The worst-case scenario is known at the moment of entry. Approximately 92% of SPX 0DTE activity uses these capped-risk structures, according to the Cboe paper.
The April 21 case study
The report’s most vivid illustration comes from a case study conducted on April 21, 2026. On that day, the S&P 500 experienced an intraday decline of 0.94%, a modest move by any historical standard.
Two hypothetical positions with equivalent notional exposure were compared. A 10x leveraged short perpetual future returned +9.4%. But an at-the-money SPX 0DTE put purchased at the start of the same session returned +404%.
The gap isn’t a fluke. It’s a function of how options pricing works. When a 0DTE option moves from out-of-the-money to in-the-money on an intraday basis, gamma acceleration creates an explosive payoff curve. Perpetual futures, locked into their linear structure, simply can’t replicate that convexity.
Two different animals for two different jobs
The Cboe paper frames the distinction in terms of use cases. Perpetual futures, it argues, function primarily as speculative and leverage tools. The tradeoff is symmetric, uncapped risk that can liquidate positions in minutes during volatile sessions.
0DTE options serve a different constituency. The report characterizes their primary applications as hedging existing portfolio exposure and generating income through premium collection. Both strategies rely on the defined-risk properties that perpetual futures lack entirely.
The scale of the 0DTE market reinforces its institutional character. As of Q2 2026, 0DTE contracts accounted for over 60% of typical SPX options volume. The average daily notional for these instruments peaked at $2.3 trillion.
What this means for traders and regulators
The regulatory implications are significant. Perpetual futures carry margin and liquidation risks that 0DTE options structurally avoid. An investor who buys a 0DTE put can lose their premium and nothing more. An investor holding a leveraged perpetual future can lose their entire margin, and potentially more, depending on the platform’s liquidation mechanics.
The competitive angle for Cboe is hard to miss. As the operator of the largest US options exchange and the home of SPX options, Cboe has a direct commercial interest in emphasizing the sophistication and risk-management advantages of its flagship products.
Traders navigating both worlds should take the core finding seriously regardless of Cboe’s motivations. A +9.4% return and a +404% return on the same market day, from instruments that some policymakers consider equivalent, is the kind of gap that separates informed positioning from expensive surprises.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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