Kalshi's new stock market has traded $1.75 billion – Most of the trades are small

Traders have bought and sold $1.75 billion of stock perps on Kalshi, a US-regulated exchange, since Nov. 5. The perps are contracts that track a share price nearly around the clock. The typical trade was about $200.

Kalshi's stock perps let anyone bet on a stock at night, on Sundays and with borrowed money. The first week's records suggest everyday investors are taking up the offer, in small amounts.

The range is wide. At 9:19 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) on Wednesday, hours after Wall Street closed, one trader swapped $258,467 of Nvidia in a single trade. The next morning, someone traded 59 cents of Pfizer.

The count

Most trades are under $1,000

Kalshi does not say who its customers are, but its public records show the size of every trade. The latest day shows small trades far outnumber large ones. Over the 24 hours to 3:38 p.m. ET on Thursday, its stock perps recorded 152,790 trades worth $195.2 million.

Nvidia's count needs a caveat. Nearly 30,000 of its trades were almost the same size, each worth less than $100. A pattern that regular suggests an automated program rather than people.

Leaving Nvidia aside, 77% of trades were under $1,000. Together, those small trades added up to 14% of the money.

The money

A few large trades carry the weight

At the other end, trades of $10,000 or more were 4.1% of the count. They carried 44.5% of the dollars.

Kalshi's data does not name those larger traders. They could be wealthy individuals, or firms that quote buy and sell prices all day so that smaller orders can fill.

Either way, the small trader is the crowd while larger players set much of the price. The table shows how that mix looks stock by stock.

Kalshi's busiest stock perps since launch

Kalshi public data. Traded since Nov. 5 runs to 3 p.m. ET on Nov. 12. The past day is the 24 hours to 3:38 p.m. ET on Nov. 12; a typical trade is the middle one by dollar value. Nvidia's count includes nearly 30,000 trades of 20 to 24 contracts. Open positions are as of 3:38 p.m. ET.

The clock

Four in ten Dollars trade while the stock market is shut

The other draw for an investor with a day job is the clock. About 39% of all trading since launch happened outside the stock market's weekday session.

Kalshi's stock perps reopen at 6 p.m. ET on Sundays, and that first Sunday evening brought $156.6 million of trades. Kalshi's rules hold the reference price at the last official close until the stock market reopens.

Even so, the busiest hour of the past day was 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. ET, around the opening bell. It saw $48.9 million change hands, a quarter of the day's total.

The risk

What borrowing does to a small trade

Small trades can still carry big risk. Kalshi lets traders borrow on these perps, currently up to about 5 times their deposit on many stocks. At that level, a $500 position needs about $100 of the trader's own cash.

The same borrowing cuts the other way. A drop of less than 20% can wipe out that deposit, and Kalshi closes the position before the loss gets that far.

What to watch

Whether small traders stay is the open question. Open positions in Kalshi's stock perps stood at $16.3 million on Thursday, up from $8.2 million after the first day. Most money still turns over within hours, as a day's trading runs about 12 times what is left open.

The next test is Friday, Nov. 20, after a second full week. If open positions keep growing, more of these small traders are holding their bets instead of trading in and out.