Interactive Brokers conducted its first live test of location-specific hurricane contracts on its ForecastEx platform, with products tied to wind gust measurements at 25 US coastal locations. Hurricane Isaias, the first Atlantic hurricane of 2026 to threaten the United States, served as the test case for this new generation of contracts, which respond to wind gust thresholds ranging from 70 to 200 mph in 10 mph increments. These contracts activate when forecasts show a 5% probability that gusts will exceed 70 mph at a given location, and settle within days after a storm dissipates. Catastrophe modeling firm Reask provides both the forecast probabilities and post-storm gust reconstructions used for settlement, which relies on 3-second gust maxima rather than the traditional 1-minute sustained wind measure. Liquidity across these markets, limited to just 25 locations per storm, remains a key question for broader adoption.
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