What a perpetual future is, and how funding works

Section highlights (8)

1. An ordinary future has an expiry. A perpetual future does not.
2. The interval differs from venue to venue.
3. The rate describes funding payments, not future returns.
4. Six contracts, 40 days, 960 hours per contract, counted with no value filled in.
5. The median hourly funding rate of the six contracts ranged from 0.000000% to +0.001250%.
6. The share of positive hours ran from 5.63% to 94.48%, depending on the contract.
7. The median daily total of the six contracts ranged from -0.0036% to +0.0292%.
8. What was counted is the payment rate of six contracts over 40 days.

Contents

A perpetual future is a type of futures contract with no settlement date. This article sets out how it works and what the funding rate does.

The size of the funding rate is counted from the records of six contracts. The period is the 40 days from 20 August to 28 September 2026.

What a perpetual future is

Scroll the figure sideways

A future with no expiry date

A futures contract normally has a date by which it must be settled. The month in which that date falls is called the contract month (Japanese: gengetsu). When the date arrives, the contract is settled and it ends.

A perpetual future has no such date. "Perpetual" means what it says. As long as the position is held, it can in principle be held indefinitely.

An ordinary future has an expiry. A perpetual future does not.

Side by side with an ordinary future

The table compares expiry, holding period, settlement and funding.

Where they are used (from our daily snapshots)

This site saves the provider's contract list once a day. We counted contracts not marked as delisted.

Scroll the table sideways

The other sections cover equities, equity indices, commodities, currencies and similar; a few crypto indicators sit there too. In the 9 October snapshot, the Nikkei 225, S&P 500, gold and dollar–yen contracts were all not marked as delisted.

Gap between mark price and reference price

A perpetual future has no expiry. Its mark price, used for valuation, and its external reference price are separate values. Across 59 snapshots we compared the mark price with the oracle price, the external reference the provider uses.

Scroll the table sideways

The snapshots run from 8 August to 9 October 2026, taken between 22:04 and 23:26 UTC.

Absolute price gap = |mark price ÷ oracle price − 1| × 100. Snapshot turnover is the provider's rolling 24-hour notional volume in USDC. The count uses contracts not marked as delisted; it does not require a trade in that snapshot.

How the funding rate works

Funding is a periodic payment associated with a perpetual-futures position. The rate sets the payment between the two sides.

Scroll the figure sideways

Start with the direction of payment

The sign of the funding rate determines the payment direction.

• When funding is positive: the long side pays the short side.
• When funding is negative: the short side pays the long side.

The funding rate and the gap to the reference price are separate quantities. The rate does not establish a future traded price.

When it happens, and between whom

Payments generally happen at fixed intervals. Every few hours, or every hour, depending on the venue.

The records counted in this article are hourly. The payment runs between the long side and the short side.

The interval differs from venue to venue.

What the rate sets

The rate sets the direction and the amount of the payment. The amount is the value of the position multiplied by the rate.

The sign describes a payment direction. The payment direction does not guarantee a future move.

The rate describes funding payments, not future returns.

What was measured, and how

The contracts

Six contracts are counted. They come from five of the sections of the board: two index contracts, one for Japan and one for the United States, and one contract from each of the other four.

This is not a total over every contract on the board. No contract was taken from the Japan stocks section or the pre-IPO section.

Period and counts

The period runs from 00:00 UTC on 20 August 2026 to 00:00 UTC on 29 September 2026. That is 40 days, or 960 hours per contract.

The six contracts total 5,760 records. No hour is missing.

The values are the funding-rate history from the public API named in the source line above. They were retrieved on 29 September 2026.

Calculation

The hourly funding rate is the recorded value multiplied by 100, as a percentage. It is shown rounded to six decimal places.

The median is the middle of the 960 values in ascending order. With an even count it is the mean of the two middle values.

The range is the smallest and the largest value in the period. Nothing is converted to an annual rate.

Six contracts, 40 days, 960 hours per contract, counted with no value filled in.

From this site's records

The hourly funding rate

Every value in the table is a funding rate per hour. N is the number of hours counted.

Scroll the table sideways

Hourly funding rate, six contracts, 20 Aug–28 Sep 2026 (UTC)

Contract	Median	Minimum	Maximum	Most frequent value (hours, share)
Nikkei 225 (N=960)	+0.000625%	-0.031550%	+0.021139%	+0.000625% (392 hours, 40.83%)
S&P 500 (N=960)	+0.000625%	-0.004293%	+0.003031%	+0.000625% (544 hours, 56.67%)
NVIDIA (N=960)	+0.000625%	-0.010441%	+0.010580%	+0.000625% (685 hours, 71.35%)
Gold (N=960)	+0.000625%	-0.005792%	+0.006076%	+0.000625% (601 hours, 62.60%)
USD/JPY (N=960)	0.000000%	-0.019626%	+0.002510%	0.000000% (548 hours, 57.08%)
BTC/USD (N=960)	+0.001250%	-0.001595%	+0.008977%	+0.001250% (689 hours, 71.77%)

The share is the share of the 960 hours.

Reading the median

For four of the six contracts the median was +0.000625%. It was +0.001250% for BTC/USD and 0.000000% for USD/JPY.

Applied to a position valued at 1,000,000 yen, +0.000625% is 6.25 yen per hour. +0.001250% is 12.50 yen per hour.

For all six contracts the median equalled the most frequent value. That value was recorded in 392 to 689 hours, depending on the contract.

Reading the range

The difference between minimum and maximum was largest for the Nikkei 225. Its minimum was -0.031550% and its maximum was +0.021139%.

Applied to 1,000,000 yen, those are 315.50 yen and 211.39 yen. The minimum is the record for 23:00 UTC on 28 September. The maximum is the record for 20:00 UTC on 5 September.

The difference was smallest for the S&P 500. Its minimum was -0.004293% and its maximum was +0.003031%.

The median hourly funding rate of the six contracts ranged from 0.000000% to +0.001250%.

Signs and daily totals

Positive hours and negative hours

In an hour with a positive rate the long side paid the short side. In an hour with a negative rate the short side paid the long side.

Scroll the table sideways

The share of positive hours was highest for Gold, at 94.48%. It was lowest for USD/JPY, at 5.63%.

The sum over the period is the 960 values added together. It is not compounded. It is shown to four decimal places.

Shares are rounded to two decimal places. In the NVIDIA row the three shares add up to 100.01%.

The share of positive hours ran from 5.63% to 94.48%, depending on the contract.

Daily totals

A daily total is the 24 values of one UTC date added together.

Scroll the table sideways

All 40 days had 24 values. For BTC/USD the daily total was positive on all 40 days.

For the Nikkei 225 the daily total was positive on 23 days and negative on 17 days.

The median daily total of the six contracts ranged from -0.0036% to +0.0292%.

What this record covers

This record counts the payment rate. It does not count price moves after a rate was recorded.

It covers six contracts over 40 days. Other contracts and other periods are not in it.

What was counted is the payment rate of six contracts over 40 days.

Equity perpetuals and 24-hour price discovery

A perpetual-futures price is not the cash share price. When the cash market is shut and a price still forms through perpetual trading, this article calls that price discovery.

Weekend trades while cash markets are shut

We counted weekend trades in 1,106 saved hourly bars per contract, starting at 00:00 UTC on 25 August and ending before 02:00 UTC on 10 October 2026, with no missing hours. Of these, 290 start on Saturday or Sunday in UTC. Bars before 6 October were retrieved retrospectively on 6 October.

Scroll the table sideways

Turnover is an estimate: each bar's volume times its close, summed, in USDC. Weekend hours are 26.2% of all hours; all four contracts had a smaller share of turnover than that.

Alerts outside the session

This site's filtered velocity-alert sample has 830 rows from 27 August to 9 October 2026; 675 are equities. The filtered sample excludes 76 rows timestamped 22:15:21, 22:16:22 or 22:26:27 UTC on 22 September; 906 rows preceded this exclusion. Counts describe alerts, not every market move. The cash-market state could be determined for 450 of them.

Of the 450 determined rows, 93 (20.7%) were outside the session. Four rows fell on a Saturday or Sunday in UTC: one for SK hynix and three for KIOXIA.

The hourly turnover estimate uses volume × close; trade counts use each bar's recorded number of trades.

Scroll the figure sideways

Where StockTicker24 fits

StockTicker24 carries prices of perpetual futures traded on an offshore derivatives venue and shows them in English as 24-hour reference values. Details of the source are set out on the About the data page.

The series includes overnight and early-morning hours when cash markets are closed.

Common questions

If there is no expiry, can a position be held forever?

As long as the position is held, it can in principle be held indefinitely.

When does funding happen?

Generally at fixed intervals, which differ from venue to venue. The records counted in this article are hourly.

How large is the funding rate?

Across six contracts and 960 hours each, the median hourly rate ranged from 0.000000% to +0.001250%. The minimum was -0.031550% and the maximum was +0.021139%.

If the funding rate is positive, does the price go up?

A positive rate means the long side pays the short side. The payment direction does not guarantee a future move.

Is the price shown the cash price of the share?

No. It is a reference value, formed with the cash price as its point of reference.

Change log

2026-09-27: Clarified funding payment direction, settlement terms and the distinction between reference prices and cash prices.

2026-09-29: Added “From this site's records”. Its content is a count of the hourly funding-rate records.

Summary

• A perpetual future is a futures contract with no settlement date.
• Funding is a periodic payment between long and short positions.
• Across six contracts and 960 hours each, the median hourly funding rate ranged from 0.000000% to +0.001250%.
• The share of hours with a positive rate ran from 5.63% to 94.48%, depending on the contract.
• The perpetual future and its underlying reference are different instruments, and a gap can open between them.
• Perpetual futures on equities are used as a price marker for the hours when cash markets are shut.
• What is displayed is a reference value.

This article explains a mechanism. It does not recommend any particular trade.

Source: JPX / Hyperliquid (site reference price) / Published: Aug 25, 2026 / Last updated: Oct 17, 2026 / Perpetual-futures prices are reference values.