Scope Prime oil CFDs are now available round the clock after the institutional broker extended its continuous trading offering from precious metals to Brent and WTI crude, moving into a gap left by the regulatory hold on CME Group’s equivalent exchange-listed product.
Scope Prime, the institutional arm of Rostro Group, announced the launch for contracts for difference (CFDs, over-the-counter instruments that track an underlying asset’s price without transferring ownership of it) on both Brent and WTI crude. The firm says it is among the first prime-of-prime brokers to offer continuous OTC oil CFD liquidity, following the rollout of 24/7 gold and silver CFDs earlier this year.
What Scope Prime Oil CFDs Actually Offer
The product is aimed squarely at institutional clients: brokers and funds that carry energy-related positions outside the hours of traditional exchanges. According to Scope Prime, the core problem is the weekend gap. OPEC+ production decisions, sanctions announcements and infrastructure disruptions regularly land between Friday evening’s close and Sunday’s reopening, leaving firms with live energy exposure unable to hedge.
When prices move sharply over that window, brokers can face margin shortfalls and negative balance events (where client losses exceed the collateral held in the account). Scope Prime’s 24/7 oil CFDs are designed to keep a hedging route open during exactly those hours.
Daniel Lawrance, Chief Executive Officer of Scope Prime, said demand for continuous trading had grown following the gold and silver launch. ‘Gold proved that demand for always-on markets is real,’ Lawrance said, adding that oil was chosen next because ‘the needs of the market are most acute.’
Scope Prime states that its parent, Rostro Group, employs more than 250 professionals serving clients in over 200 countries across a range of more than 40,000 financial assets.
The CME Crude Futures Hold That Created the Opening
The OTC launch lands at an awkward moment for the exchange-traded alternative. CME Group had planned to introduce a new 10-Barrel WTI Crude Oil futures contract as its first energy product to trade continuously on CME Globex, sized at one-hundredth of the benchmark WTI contract and targeting a planned launch of 30 August.
That plan ran into regulatory resistance. CME sought to self-certify the contract on 8 July 2026, but the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) exercised its authority to stay the listing on 9 July 2026, citing an ongoing public comment period on extending standard futures contracts to round-the-clock trading, according to Reuters.
The CFTC subsequently extended its review by a further 30 days, pushing the public comment deadline to 26 August 2026, just four days before CME’s planned launch, after saying it had held extensive conversations with industry, according to Argus Media. Whether the August 30 date holds now looks uncertain.
Under CME’s proposed structure, any trades executed over the weekend or during exchange holidays would carry a trade date of the following business day, with clearing and settlement processed accordingly.
Gold’s Weekend Debut Showed the Appetite Is Real
CME has had more success with its 24/7 gold push. The exchange did roll out continuous trading for its 1-Ounce Gold futures, with the inaugural weekend falling on 26-27 July 2026. (CME’s own June 11 press release listed a start date of 24 July; a PR Newswire republication of the same release gave 26 July. The primary CME document reporting on the inaugural weekend confirms trading occurred on 26-27 July.)
That first weekend, nearly 15,000 contracts traded, representing approximately $60 million in notional value, according to a CME Group press release on the inaugural weekend. The 1-Ounce Gold contract, launched in January 2025, was already averaging 90,000 contracts in daily volume in 2026, and CME’s broader benchmark gold futures were seeing $100 billion in notional traded each day in 2025.
Those numbers explain why Scope Prime oil CFDs follow the gold template so closely. Lawrance is betting that energy clients have the same appetite for weekend access as gold traders demonstrated.
The CFTC’s August 26 comment deadline is the next pressure point. If the regulator allows CME’s crude contract to list, exchange-traded and OTC 24/7 oil products will compete directly. If the stay extends further, the OTC window stays open for longer.
