Kalshi taps perpetual futures on stocks to trade Tesla, Apple, Nvidia 24/7

Kalshi wants to turn Wall Street’s trading floor into something that never actually closes. The prediction-market platform is preparing to ask regulators for approval to list roughly 60 Kalshi perpetual futures contracts tied to major U.S. stocks and exchange-traded funds, a move that would let traders bet on companies like Tesla, Apple, and Nvidia around the clock, even when Wall Street itself is shut for the night or the weekend.

Key takeaways

• Kalshi plans to seek approval for about 60 perpetual futures tied to U.S. stocks and ETFs, including names like Tesla, Apple, and Nvidia.
• These contracts would trade nonstop, filling the gap left when Nasdaq and other exchanges close for the day or the weekend.
• The CFTC approved Kalshi’s Bitcoin perpetual contract in May 2026 but signaled it would review other asset classes case by case.
• Citadel Securities has told regulators that equity-linked perpetuals should stay under SEC oversight, not the CFTC’s.
• Open questions remain around insider trading risk, trading halts, and how surveillance would work across two separate markets.

Kalshi’s Plan for 24/7 Perpetual Futures on U.S. Stocks

At the center of this story is a simple but disruptive idea: strip the expiration date off a futures contract and let it trade continuously, with periodic payments between buyers and sellers keeping its price tethered to the underlying asset. That’s the mechanics behind a perpetual futures contract, a structure crypto exchanges have run for years and one Kalshi is now importing into traditional equities.

Product scope and targeted stocks

Kalshi’s filing covers close to 60 separate contracts linked to individual stocks and ETFs. The company has floated names including Tesla, Apple, and Nvidia as potential candidates, giving retail and institutional traders a way to take positions on some of the most heavily traded companies in the market without waiting for the opening bell.

Trading outside traditional hours

What makes this proposal notable isn’t just the number of contracts; it’s the schedule. A Tesla perpetual contract, for instance, could keep trading through the night and straight through the weekend, long after Nasdaq has gone dark. That would hand traders a continuous price signal for major companies at moments when the underlying stock market simply isn’t open, something U.S. equities have never offered before.

Regulatory Landscape and Approvals

Whether Kalshi’s equity perpetuals move forward depends almost entirely on how regulators classify them, and that answer isn’t settled yet. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has already opened the door partway, but it hasn’t committed to walking every asset class through it.

CFTC’s approval of Bitcoin perpetual contract

The CFTC approved Kalshi’s Bitcoin perpetual contract in May 2026, classifying it as a standard futures product. Since then, according to figures reported by CNBC, those crypto perpetuals have generated roughly $44 billion in notional trading volume, tapping into an asset class that produced an estimated $90 trillion in annual volume globally in 2025. The CFTC followed that approval with a second one this week, greenlighting perpetual futures on gold and silver, the first time the agency has approved a non-crypto perpetual contract. Kalshi’s chief risk officer at its clearing arm, Kalshi Klear, pointed to inflation-driven demand for metals as the reason the company prioritized gold and silver next.

Pending reviews for equity-linked contracts

Even with two approvals already on the books, the CFTC has been careful to say the Bitcoin precedent won’t automatically extend to every asset. The regulator has indicated that perpetual contracts tied to other assets, including stocks, will face individual, case-by-case reviews. That stance matters a great deal now that Kalshi is pushing equities into the mix alongside metals, currencies, and industrial commodities like copper, all reportedly filed for review in August. The metals approval offers a template, but equities carry a different set of stakeholders and a different regulator watching closely.

Industry Concerns and SEC Oversight Debate

Not everyone is comfortable watching crypto-style trading mechanics migrate onto contracts tied to publicly traded companies, and the pushback is coming from one of Wall Street’s biggest market makers.

Citadel Securities’ position on SEC jurisdiction

Citadel Securities sent a letter to both the SEC and the CFTC arguing that any perpetual contract linked to a public company’s stock should remain under SEC oversight, not the CFTC’s. The firm’s reasoning centers on consistency: current SEC rules tie together surveillance across stocks, options, and related markets, and Citadel warns that routing equity perpetuals through a different regulatory framework risks building a parallel market that runs on entirely different rules and different watchdogs. This regulatory turf question matters well beyond one company’s letter, because it could determine which agency writes the rulebook for an entirely new category of equity trading.

Risks related to insider trading and trading halts

Citadel’s letter also flagged two more concrete operational risks. The first is insider trading exposure: someone holding nonpublic information about a company could, in theory, trade a perpetual contract linked to that stock while the actual stock market is closed and unable to react. The second involves trading halts. If a company releases market-moving news while its shares are halted on the exchange, a perpetual contract tracking that same stock could keep trading elsewhere without any coordinated stop, effectively pricing in news the underlying market hasn’t been allowed to react to yet.

The broader reaction on Wall Street has already been visible in stock prices. Shares of traditional futures exchange operators CBOE and CME Group fell after the CFTC’s initial approvals, reflecting investor concern that perpetual contracts could siphon volume away from established exchanges. CME has gone as far as suing the CFTC, arguing the agency improperly approved the new contract type in the first place. That litigation, still unresolved, hangs over every subsequent approval the CFTC issues, including whatever decision eventually comes on Kalshi’s equity filings.

Kalshi’s equity ambitions essentially ask regulators to answer a question the U.S. market has never had to face at this scale: can a fixed-session market and a 24/7 derivative coexist without creating blind spots in surveillance, price discovery, and investor protection? The gold and silver approval shows the CFTC is willing to extend the model beyond crypto. Whether it extends that same logic to single-stock contracts tied to companies like Tesla, Apple, and Nvidia will likely shape how much of Wall Street’s trading day eventually stops having a closing bell at all.

FAQ

What are Kalshi’s planned perpetual futures products?

Kalshi plans to seek approval for about 60 perpetual futures tied to U.S. stocks and ETFs, including Tesla, Apple, and Nvidia, designed to trade 24/7 without the fixed hours of a traditional stock exchange.

Which regulator approved Kalshi’s Bitcoin perpetual contract and when?

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission approved Kalshi’s Bitcoin perpetual contract in May 2026, treating it as a standard futures product before extending similar treatment to gold and silver perpetuals in September 2026.

What regulatory concerns have been raised about equity-linked perpetual futures?

Concerns center on which regulator should oversee these contracts, the risk of insider trading during hours when the underlying stock market is closed, coordinating trading halts across markets, and keeping surveillance systems synchronized.

Why does Citadel Securities want equity-linked perpetual futures under SEC oversight?

Citadel argues these products should stay under SEC jurisdiction to preserve consistent market surveillance and prevent the creation of a parallel equity market operating under a separate set of rules.

Article produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the editorial team.