If you opened a brokerage account a few years ago and haven’t looked closely since, the industry has moved on without you. Since last fall, brokers that once sold stocks and funds have added futures, crypto, prediction markets, overnight trading and AI assistants. Regulators scrapped one of the oldest rules for active traders. And the price of borrowing on margin now varies by more than double from one firm to the next.

I keep a running log of these changes because I trade every week. Here is what changed, grouped by theme, and what it means if you’re an investor deciding where your money should live.

Futures went mainstream

Futures used to be the domain of specialist firms. In 2026, the big retail brokers moved in, and the contracts themselves got smaller.

  • June 2: Schwab added 24/7 crypto futures on its thinkorswim platform, along with dollar-based fractional shares.
  • July 2: MetroTrade added options on futures.
  • July 27: NinjaTrader announced CME single stock futures.
  • July 31: TradeStation added eight CME spot-quoted futures, including contracts on the S&P 500, Nasdaq-100, bitcoin and ether.
  • August 5: Interactive Brokers opened Brazilian B3 futures to eligible clients outside Brazil.
  • August 24: CME launched E-nano index futures, one-tenth the size of a Micro E-mini. Interactive Brokers, NinjaTrader, Robinhood and tastytrade offered them on day one; MetroTrade followed on August 26 and Webull added the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 versions on September 14.

Robinhood made the boldest move. In November 2025, it formed a joint venture with Susquehanna to buy MIAXdx, giving it its own futures and prediction-market exchange. A retail app owning an exchange would have been hard to imagine a few years ago.

The E-nano launch deserves its own article, and it has one: E-Nano Futures: Wall Street’s Smallest Index Contract, Explained.

Prediction markets arrived almost everywhere

Event contracts let you trade on the outcome of a specific event, from economic releases to sports. In the past year nearly every app-first broker added them.

  • December 16, 2025: Robinhood added player-prop and combo prediction contracts.
  • January 27, 2026: Webull launched $0-commission sports prediction markets with Kalshi.
  • July 27: tastytrade added prediction markets, built on CFTC-regulated event contracts.
  • September 23: Public launched AI agents that can trade Kalshi event contracts.

Interactive Brokers runs its own venue, ForecastEx, and Tradovate and Ironbeam offer event contracts too. Schwab doesn’t offer them. Worth knowing before you dabble: crypto and event-contract accounts generally sit outside SIPC protection.

The old guard embraced crypto

For years, buying bitcoin meant opening a separate crypto exchange account. That’s fading.

  • September 25, 2025: Fidelity launched its Trader+ platform, and on October 23 Fidelity Crypto added solana.
  • March 2026: Public allowed crypto in Traditional and Roth IRAs.
  • May 12: Schwab launched spot bitcoin and ether trading at a 0.75% fee.
  • July 16: E*TRADE launched spot bitcoin, ether and solana at 0.50%, through zerohash.

The selection still varies enormously. Robinhood offers about 90 coins and Public more than 60, while Schwab offers two. If crypto matters to you, the coin list and the fee are the two numbers to compare. On fees alone, a hypothetical $10,000 bitcoin purchase costs $75 at Schwab’s 0.75% and $50 at E*TRADE’s 0.50%.

Trading never stops

Twenty-four-hour trading went from novelty to standard feature. Robinhood, Webull, Public, Schwab, E*TRADE, tastytrade and Interactive Brokers all run overnight sessions. The menus differ: Interactive Brokers offers more than 10,000 securities overnight, Schwab about 1,300.

Overnight spreads are wider, so the price you get at 2 a.m. is usually worse than the price you’d get at 2 p.m. Overnight access is handy for reacting to news, though wider spreads make it costly for routine orders. If you do trade overnight, use a limit order so a thin market can’t fill you far from the last price.

AI moved into the account

Three brokers now let AI touch real money in some form. On June 1, Interactive Brokers let clients link accounts to Claude, which drafts stock and ETF orders that the client approves one by one. Robinhood’s Agentic Trading, announced May 27, goes further: a connected AI agent can trade in a dedicated account and, if you allow it, without asking first. Public’s September launch lets agents trade event contracts.

The control you keep varies a great deal between these setups. I cover them, and the safeguards I’d insist on, in Should You Let AI Trade for You? What Brokers Now Allow.

The day-trading rule disappeared

For active traders, the most important rule change of the year came from regulators. The SEC approved FINRA’s new intraday margin standards on April 14, 2026, effective June 4. The $25,000 pattern-day-trader minimum is gone, along with the designation that kicked in after four or more day trades in five business days. Day trades are no longer counted.

The catch is timing. Brokers have until October 20, 2027 to implement the new standards, so your broker may still be on the old system. Schwab stopped counting day trades on June 8, 2026. Ask yours where it stands.

Margin rates split apart

Several brokers repriced margin in mid-September 2026, and they didn’t move together. On a $25,000 balance, published rates now run from 5.15% at Public to 12.20% at E*TRADE, with Schwab and Fidelity both at 11.575%. That’s roughly $1,760 a year in extra interest on the same loan. I covered the gap, and the matching gap in what brokers pay on idle cash, in Your Broker May Be Charging You Double to Borrow.

What it means for you

The pattern across all of this is that the app-first brokers and Interactive Brokers moved fastest, and the established firms followed in some areas and held back in others. That leaves a wide spread between brokers, on price and on features.

Three practical steps:

  1. Review your broker against what you actually use. If you never touch crypto or event contracts, those launches don’t matter to you. Margin rates, cash yield and support might.
  2. Check for the new rules. If you were held back by the $25,000 day-trading minimum, find out whether your broker has implemented the change.
  3. Weigh the offers carefully. tastytrade, E*TRADE and Schwab are running sign-up or referral bonuses this fall, and each requires holding the money for about a year. E*TRADE’s offer requires opening an account by October 31.

I track every launch by date, with a source for each, on the BrokerNimble what’s-new page. For the bigger decision of which firm fits you, start with my full guide to choosing and using a broker.

Disclosure: Peter Agro runs BrokerNimble.com, an independent broker comparison site that plans to join broker affiliate programs and may earn referral fees in the future. Figures were checked in October 2026 and change often; confirm current terms with the provider. This article is for information only and is not investment, tax or legal advice. Futures, margin and options trading involve substantial risk of loss, including losses greater than your deposit.