Interactive Brokers tests location-specific hurricane contracts

Interactive Brokers is testing a new set of live hurricane contracts on its ForecastEx platform, aimed at helping traders price and hedge storm risk one coastline at a time. The pilot ran on a real storm, Hurricane Isaias. How the contracts actually work The new contracts are tied to the maximum wind gust speed recorded at a specific coastal location during an Atlantic storm. Traders can pick from wind gust thresholds running from 70 mph to 200 mph, set in 10 mph steps. Contracts only go live once forecasts show a projected 5% chance of gusts topping 70 mph at a given location. The Isaias test run Hurricane Isaias was the first Atlantic hurricane of 2026 to threaten the US. As the storm strengthened, Interactive Brokers listed contracts for 25 coastal locations starting October 7, 2026. According to Interactive Brokers, the pilot was the first complete end-to-end test of these contracts on a real storm, running the full cycle of listing, trading and settlement against live weather rather than a simulation. Reask, a catastrophe-modeling firm, supplies both the forecast probabilities used before a storm hits and the wind gust reconstructions used after it passes. The contracts are de...