Kalshi has received CFTC approval for its US500 perpetual future and opened the contract for trading, less than two months after submitting it for regulatory review.
The product gives US clients leveraged long or short exposure to 500 large American companies without a fixed expiry date. It expands Kalshi’s perpetual futures range beyond cryptocurrencies and metals into equities.
The cash-settled contract references the MerQube US Large Cap Index, which covers the 500 largest US-listed and US-domiciled companies by float-adjusted market capitalisation.
Today we launched the first stock index perpetual future in America. You can now trade a perp on the US 500, an index of America’s largest companies weighted by market cap. Stock index perps let you trade the broader market with greater capital efficiency and make it easier to do things like take a short position. Unlike traditional options and futures, they don’t expire, so there’s no need to roll over contracts or decide when to exercise an option. Gains and losses are tied directly to how much the market moves, giving you an efficient and straightforward way to ask the question: is the market going up or down? One perpetual contract concentrates liquidity instead of spreading it across expiration dates. Bringing more traders and competing views into a single liquidity pool on a national exchange can strengthen competition, improve pricing, and make markets more efficient over time. This launch brings us closer to building a financial exchange for anyone and everyone. Prediction markets gave traders exposure to the events that move the stock market. The US 500 is the natural next step: a way to trade on the market itself.
— Kalshi (@Kalshi) October 6, 2026
Daily Funding Replaces Expiration
US500 follows the standard perpetual-futures model: no fixed expiry, no delivery date, daily payments between long and short positions to keep its price aligned with the underlying index. Thus, traders can maintain their exposure without completing the quarterly rollovers required for conventional dated index futures.
The contract trades from 6 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday until 5 p.m. on Friday. The underlying index, however, is calculated only during regular US equity trading hours.
Outside those hours, the contract continues trading against the last published index level, while overnight price movements are excluded from the funding calculation.
- Kalshi Targets Institutional Traders with Margin for Prediction Markets
- Hedge Funds Can Now Backtest Kalshi Prediction Market Prices Through BMLL
- The CFTC Says 'Gaming' Is Undefined: What Actually Separates a Prediction Market from a Sportsbook
Kalshi determines the daily funding rate at 4 p.m. on each index business day using price differences recorded while it calculates the benchmark. Each contract has a multiplier of $1 per index point, meaning a one-point movement changes its value by $1. Fractional positions as small as one ten-thousandth of a contract are permitted.
Trades are centrally cleared by Kalshi Klear, with initial and maintenance requirements calculated under a risk-based margin model.
At the time of publication, the market page showed $556,000 in 24-hour volume and $219,600 in open interest. Available leverage was 15.3 times, although these figures can change as trading develops.
US Access Separates Kalshi from Offshore
Kalshi is not the only one to offer perpetual exposure to the US equity market. Offshore venues have already launched similar products, although they use different benchmarks and contract structures.
Trade[XYZ] provides eligible non-US clients with a Hyperliquid-based perpetual referencing the licensed S&P 500 Index. Binance and Bybit offer SPYUSDT perpetuals that track the SPDR S&P 500 ETF rather than the index itself.
Kalshi offers regulated US access. Traders receive synthetic exposure instead of ownership of the constituent shares. The contract references the price-return version of the MerQube index, so holders do not receive dividends, voting rights or other shareholder entitlements.
