Kalshi opens U.S.-regulated perpetual future on large-cap stocks

Kalshi Prime opened its US500 perpetual-futures contract to clients on Oct. 7, offering continuous exposure to a U.S. large-cap stock index. Kalshi describes the product as the first U.S.-regulated stock-index perpetual future, a distinction from equity-index perpetuals already available on offshore venues.

As we reported on Oct. 3, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission had approved Kalshi’s perpetual future on U.S. large-cap stocks. KalshiEX LLC had voluntarily submitted the product for CFTC review on Aug. 18, 49 days before its reported launch.

The official product name is the MerQube US Large Cap Index Perpetual Future. Its underlying index comprises 500 companies listed and domiciled in the United States, weighted by float-adjusted market capitalisation.

The cash-settled contract has no fixed expiry or delivery date. Each index point is worth $1 per contract, and traders can take fractional positions as small as 0.0001. The exposure is synthetic, meaning holders receive neither dividends nor voting rights.

Like other perpetual futures, US500 uses funding payments between long and short holders to keep the contract aligned with its underlying index. The daily rate is calculated from premiums observed while the index is calculated, then transferred at 4 p.m. New York time on index business days.

Trading operates from 6 p.m. New York time on Sunday until 5 p.m. Friday, while the underlying index is calculated during regular U.S. equity-market hours of 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern. Kalshi Klear clears the contract using risk-based margin. The Defiant reported that Kalshi displayed maximum leverage of 15.3 times on the launch day.

Kalshi Prime clients can trade the product through the futures commission merchant relationship used for the platform’s cryptocurrency and commodities perpetuals. The offering includes stop-loss and take-profit orders, liquidation warnings and around-the-clock market surveillance.

The launch follows Kalshi’s cryptocurrency perpetuals, which received approval in late May, and its gold and silver perpetuals, which began trading Sept. 10. Kalshi’s website said its crypto perpetuals had recorded $44 billion in notional volume after launch.

Perpetual futures have historically traded almost entirely on offshore, unregulated venues, according to Kalshi’s CFTC filing. The company argued that listing US500 on a CFTC-registered designated contract market brings trade surveillance, know-your-customer checks, risk-based margin, central clearing and disciplinary procedures to the product.

Kalshi’s filing also said perpetuals can avoid the cost and basis risk of rolling a position between dated futures contracts, while concentrating liquidity in one instrument. It characterised them as complementary to dated equity-index futures, which retain uses for term-structure, dividend, financing and date-specific settlement exposure.