Kalshi starts trading US 500 perpetual future with no expiry date

Kalshi opens a stock-index contract that never expires

Kalshi began trading its US 500 perpetual future on Oct. 6. The contract gives approved customers leveraged long or short exposure to large U.S. stocks, and it has no expiration date.

A perpetual future is a contract that does not expire. Instead of settling on a set date, it stays open and uses regular payments between buyers and sellers to keep its price close to the underlying index.

Key numbers from the launch

• The contract is cash-settled and tracks the MerQube US Large Cap Index, described in Kalshi's CFTC filing as a basket of 500 U.S.-listed and domiciled companies weighted by float-adjusted market capitalization.
• Each full contract has a multiplier of $1 per index point.
• Kalshi's market board showed maximum US 500 leverage of 15.3 times and about $1.07 million in 24-hour trading volume when viewed at 5:51 p.m. ET on launch day.
• Leverage limits vary by asset and position size, according to Kalshi's customer guidance.
• Kalshi described the design as a way to pool trading: "One perpetual contract concentrates liquidity instead of spreading it across expiration dates."

What the CFTC letter says about approval

A CFTC staff letter confirms that Kalshi's Aug. 18 submission under Regulation 40.3 was deemed approved on Oct. 2. The contract extends Kalshi's earlier expansion into futures commission merchant-backed perpetuals to a broad-based stock index.

How the daily funding payments work

Under the filed terms, funding is exchanged at 4 p.m. ET on each index business day, or at the scheduled close on shortened trading days. The rate averages eligible one-minute premiums or discounts of the contract price to the index during regular U.S. stock-market hours. Minutes without trades or a current index feed are left out.

A positive rate means long holders pay short holders, and a negative rate reverses that payment. Rates below 0.002% in absolute value are set to zero, and payments use a rate capped at plus or minus 2%. The index is a price-return benchmark, so holders do not receive dividends paid by the companies in it.

The contract trades from Sunday at 6 p.m. ET through Friday at 5 p.m. ET, subject to halts and maintenance. Funding measurements exclude periods when the underlying index is not being calculated, even if the future keeps trading.

Margin rules and who can trade

Initial and maintenance margin follow Kalshi's risk-based methodology. Kalshi's margin guidance says opening collateral depends on leverage and position size, and that falling below maintenance margin can trigger liquidation. The app uses isolated margin, which separates the risk of each position, but Kalshi warns that extreme losses can exceed posted collateral.

U.S.-based, identity-verified users can apply for a margin account; access is not automatic. Most retail users trade perpetuals through Kalshi Prime, a futures commission merchant, while Kalshi Klear centrally clears the contract. Kalshi says the perpetuals margin account is separate from prediction-market balances, with customer collateral segregated from its operating funds.

CFTC opens a conversion route for older contracts

Separately, on Oct. 5, CFTC staff announced relief allowing designated contract markets to remove expiry dates from existing perpetual-style stock-index futures. The letter says those contracts already used funding mechanisms but kept long-dated expirations, including some of up to 25 years.

That conversion route requires participant feedback, at least five calendar days' notice to holders of open positions, an opportunity to exit, and no other material contract changes. The staff relief expires Oct. 20.

What is confirmed and what is not clear yet

Confirmed: Kalshi opened the US 500 perpetual future on Oct. 6, the CFTC deemed its Aug. 18 filing approved on Oct. 2, and the contract tracks the MerQube US Large Cap Index with a $1 multiplier per index point.

Still unclear from the supplied material: how much trading volume the contract has done since launch day, how many users have been approved for margin accounts, and whether other exchanges will use the CFTC's conversion route before the relief expires on Oct. 20.

Why the removal of expiry dates matters

Traders who keep exposure through CME's quarterly equity-index futures must replace expiring positions with later-dated contracts. Kalshi's perpetual removes that rollover step, but it replaces expiry-based convergence with recurring funding payments between long and short holders.

Sources

• The Defiant