Kalshi is taking its perpetual futures push into the U.S. stock market, filing Tuesday with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for approval to launch a contract tracking 500 large U.S. companies.
The proposed US500 perpetual would track the MerQube US Large Cap Index, giving Kalshi customers a way to trade the direction of the broad stock market without buying shares of the companies themselves.
Like Kalshi’s existing crypto perps, US500 would have no fixed expiration date. A trader expecting the index to rise could go long, while someone expecting it to fall could go short, with gains and losses tied to changes in the index. Unlike buying stocks or an exchange-traded fund, traders would not own any of the underlying securities. And unlike conventional stock-index futures, they could maintain the same position without periodically moving into a new contract when the old one expires.
Kalshi lines up with CME Group
That distinction puts Kalshi more directly in competition with CME Group, and Kalshi repeatedly makes that comparison in its filing. The company argues that its perpetual structure could eliminate the costs and risks involved in rolling traditional quarterly equity-index futures and calls it “functionally superior to dated alternatives” for traders seeking continuous market exposure.
The comparison carries added weight because CME sued the CFTC in June over the regulator’s approval of Kalshi’s bitcoin perps, arguing that perpetual contracts should legally be treated as swaps rather than futures.
Kalshi also filed Tuesday for approval of a copper perpetual, continuing a rapid expansion beyond the cryptocurrency products with which it launched the contracts earlier this year. The company followed its initial crypto offerings with applications for gold, silver and platinum perps in July, and is now pushing the structure into industrial commodities and broad U.S. equities. Both US500 and the copper contract require CFTC approval before they can be listed.
Kalshi challenges CME on its home turf
Kalshi’s filing directly targets CME’s equity-index futures business. It repeatedly cites CME’s E-mini contracts as the traditional alternative and argues that perpetual futures address some of their shortcomings. Conventional equity-index futures expire on scheduled dates, requiring traders who want to maintain exposure to close or roll their position into a later contract. Kalshi says that process can introduce transaction costs, liquidity considerations and basis risk that a perpetual contract avoids.
“The Contract collapses that maintenance into a single, continuously held instrument,” Kalshi said in the filing. The company argues that perpetuals are functionally better than “dated alternatives” for investors seeking continuous equity exposure, although it acknowledges that conventional futures can remain useful for traders who specifically want exposure at different points along the futures curve.
US500 would also avoid the routine weekday maintenance breaks used for CME’s E-mini equity-index futures.
CME CFTC challenge
The comparisons come as CME is challenging the CFTC’s decision to allow perpetual futures on regulated U.S. futures exchanges. In its June lawsuit, CME argued that Kalshi’s bitcoin perpetual does not qualify as a futures contract because it lacks a fixed expiration or delivery date.
Instead, CME contends that the product fits the legal definition of a swap, which would subject it to a different regulatory framework than the futures regime Kalshi uses.
Kalshi pushes back on that argument directly in the US500 application. It calls CME’s focus on a fixed delivery date a “red herring” and argues that federal law does not require every futures contract to expire on a predetermined date. Kalshi also points to comments CME previously submitted to the CFTC acknowledging that some perpetual-style products could qualify as futures, arguing that the exchange operator’s current litigation position is inconsistent with its earlier stance.
That makes US500 an unusually direct challenge. While CME is asking a federal court to overturn the regulatory treatment that has allowed Kalshi to offer perpetual futures, Kalshi is seeking approval for a new perp aimed squarely at one of CME’s core markets.
How US500 would work
US500 would be available to retail traders, who could trade in very small amounts. Rather than buying the stocks that make up the index, customers would put up margin to take a position tied to its value. The filing does not set a specific leverage level.
Because the contract never expires, Kalshi would use periodic funding payments between traders to help keep its price close to the underlying stock index. That replaces the expiration-and-roll process used by conventional futures.
The contract would trade from Sunday evening through Friday afternoon, including overnight when U.S. stocks are closed. The underlying MerQube index tracks the 500 largest companies listed and domiciled in the U.S., providing broad large-cap market exposure similar to the S&P 500, though it is a separate benchmark with its own methodology.
Kalshi pushes perps beyond crypto
Kalshi’s expansion comes after a fast start for its perpetual-futures business. The contracts had generated $16.1 billion in trading volume by July 9, about six weeks after launch, with Kalshi telling Reuters that much of the activity was coming from institutional investors.
Kalshi’s expansion broadens its business well beyond the event contracts for elections, sports and other outcomes for which the prediction market platform is best known. Instead, the company is increasingly using its CFTC-regulated exchange and clearing infrastructure to offer products that compete more directly with established futures markets.
For now, that push does not include perpetuals tied to individual companies. Kalshi recently told Barron’s reporter Nick Devor that it is not launching single-stock perpetuals “at this time.” The company has reportedly separately discussed eventually offering 15-minute markets tied to individual stocks.
US500 therefore represents a different approach: giving retail traders broad exposure to the U.S. stock market through a single, non-expiring derivative. If approved, it would move Kalshi another step toward becoming a venue for trading traditional financial markets alongside the prediction contracts that built its business.
