The mission of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is to promote the integrity, resilience, and vibrancy of the U.S. derivatives markets through sound regulation. Derivatives products under the CFTC's jurisdiction include futures, swaps, and certain types of options.

Congress created the CFTC in 1974 as an independent financial regulatory agency with the mandate to regulate commodity futures and options markets in the United States. At the time, much of the activity regulated by the agency was concentrated in the agricultural futures markets.

The agency's mandate has been renewed and expanded several times since then, most recently by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 which brought the regulation of swaps under the jurisdiction of the CFTC. The CFTC's history demonstrates, among other things, how derivatives trading has become increasingly varied over time and today encompasses a vast array of highly complex financial instruments.

Today, the CFTC assures the economic utility of the derivatives markets by encouraging their competitiveness and efficiency, protecting market participants against fraud, manipulation, and abusive trading practices, and by ensuring the financial integrity of the clearing process. Through effective oversight, the CFTC enables the derivatives markets to serve the important function of providing a means for price discovery and offsetting price risk.