Kalshi Launches Regulated Single-Stock Perpetual Futures in the US

Kalshi announced the launch of regulated single-stock perpetual futures in the United States on November 5, 2026, with trading available on contracts tied to more than 50 companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. McDonald’s, Palantir, SpaceX and Meta were among the businesses named for the initial rollout.

Kalshi said it was the first US company to offer the product and that single-stock perpetuals already transact more than $4.5 trillion annually, with that activity previously taking place offshore. The launch places the contracts on a US exchange under joint oversight from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and Securities and Exchange Commission.

Co-founder and chief operating officer Luana Lopes Lara said the team spent more than a year developing the contracts and that users traded more than $300 million during the morning after what she called a stealth launch.

Contract Size and Leverage

The launch follows Kalshi’s crypto perpetual-futures rollout and its subsequent expansion into gold and silver. A stock perpetual tracks an individual company’s share price without an expiration date or share ownership. Long positions gain when the stock rises, while short positions gain when it falls; holders receive no voting rights or shareholder materials.

Each contract represents 0.02 shares, making 50 contracts equivalent to one share’s price exposure, and the minimum position is one contract. For a stock priced at $200, one contract provides about $4 of exposure. Kalshi’s leveraged example uses $50 of margin at 4x for $200 of exposure: a 10% rise produces a $20 gain, or 40% of that margin, while a 10% decline loses $20 and a 25% decline exhausts the margin. Maximum leverage varies by stock and position size.

Fees, Funding and Oversight

Kalshi presents the format as simpler than options because it has no strikes, Greeks or time decay, and cheaper than futures because it has no rollover fees. Short positions also require no special brokerage accounts, custody or borrow fees. Those comparisons do not remove the contract’s own trading and funding charges.

Payment for order flow, in which customer orders are sold to a financial institution with the exclusive right to match them, is not used for these contracts. Kalshi instead charges trading fees when positions open and close, calculated on full exposure including leverage. Orders filled immediately against the order book pay taker fees, while resting orders filled later pay maker fees.

Funding is separate from trading fees and is calculated once daily at 4:00 PM ET. Long holders pay short holders when the rate is positive, and short holders pay long holders when it is negative. Kalshi cautions that these payments can accumulate over days or weeks and reduce profit even when the underlying price moves in the position’s favor.

Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated Designated Contract Market. Stock perpetuals clear through Kalshi Klear, its CFTC-regulated clearinghouse. Most retail users trade through Kalshi Prime, a registered Futures Commission Merchant that manages margin accounts and holds customer funds separately from Kalshi’s own funds. Kalshi said its leverage levels are CFTC-approved and significantly lower than offshore perpetual products.

Access requires identity verification, a perpetuals application and an educational tutorial. The contracts use a perpetuals account separate from a user’s predictions balance, with deposits available through ACH, wire and other supported methods. Only funds not allocated to open positions can be transferred or withdrawn.

Closures, Corporate Actions and Risk

Stock perpetuals follow set schedules rather than trading around the clock. Markets have regular closures and can also close for holidays or pause around corporate actions. Positions cannot be opened or closed while a market is shut, although underlying stock prices can still move and produce a different price when trading reopens.

Corporate events can change positions or cash balances. Cash dividends create credits for long positions and charges for shorts, while splits adjust positions using the ratio in Kalshi’s published notice. A merger, delisting or bankruptcy can send a contract to final settlement and close open positions.

Traders post initial margin to open a position and must remain above the maintenance-margin threshold to keep it open. Falling below that threshold can trigger liquidation, potentially quickly, and Kalshi states that losses can exceed posted margin in exceptional market conditions. Earnings, news and market reopenings can also produce price jumps while closures prevent traders from acting.

Kalshi has paired a contract format previously used offshore with US oversight, clearing and segregated retail accounts. The central qualification is that correctly anticipating a stock’s direction is only one part of the contract’s outcome: daily funding can reduce gains, adverse moves can breach margin thresholds, and closures can delay an exit.