SEC publishes Kalshi plan for faster IPO-linked perpetual futures listings

The Securities and Exchange Commission has published KalshiEX’s proposed rule change to speed the listing of perpetual security-futures products tied to some newly public companies. The notice, Release No. 34-106841 and file SR-KALSHIEX-2026-03, was published Nov. 6 after the exchange filed it with the SEC and certified it with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission two days earlier.

The SEC is soliciting public comments on the change. The filing concerns the eligibility standards for underlying securities, rather than blanket approval for every perpetual contract Kalshi may seek to list.

Kalshi’s proposal would allow a qualifying security to underlie a perpetual security future from the second business day after its initial public offering. It is designed to reduce the time to market for products linked to IPOs, where the exchange anticipates trading interest.

A security listed for less than a month would need cumulative trading volume of at least 2.4 million shares from its IPO day, defined as its first day of regular-way trading on a national securities exchange. The early-listing route would be limited to covered securities with IPO-price market capitalisation of at least $3 billion, while all other Rule 14.3 requirements would remain applicable.

The change would also waive the usual five-business-day closing-price lookback during the first three business days after an IPO for certain covered securities. It would not displace Rule 14.3’s $100 billion current market-capitalisation requirement. Kalshi said it would apply real-time surveillance to IPO-security trading through its exchange and information-sharing arrangements with the Intermarket Surveillance Group.

Perpetual security futures are cash-settled contracts without a fixed expiry. Their funding payments vary with the gap between the contract and underlying equity prices: when the contract trades above the share price, long holders pay short holders, with the direction reversing when the share price is higher. The mechanism is intended to bring contract prices back toward the underlying at each daily settlement cycle.

Kalshi is registered with the CFTC as a designated contract market and notice-registered with the SEC as a national securities exchange for security-futures products. The agencies jointly regulate such products under federal commodities and securities laws, and Kalshi Klear, a CFTC-registered derivatives clearing organisation, would clear transactions listed on the exchange.

The rule change follows Kalshi’s September filing, SR-KALSHIEX-2026-02, which proposed Chapter 14 rules allowing perpetual security futures. Its related CFTC submission covered 58 contracts, including 55 tied to common stocks and three tied to American depositary receipts or an exchange-traded fund.

The CFTC deemed the Equity Perps approved as security-futures products on Nov. 3 and said they could begin trading on CFTC-registered exchanges. As we reported Nov. 5, Kalshi subsequently launched perpetual futures tied to individual U.S. stocks.

The SEC notice advances the exchange’s listing-rule process, but it does not itself approve individual contracts for trading.