Stock perpetual futures

Some crypto exchanges list perpetual futures on stocks, stock indices, and commodities. They trade at all hours, including weekends, when the underlying markets are closed.

An hourly scanner covered more than 250 of these contracts on Binance and Hyperliquid. It flagged new listings, price gaps between the two exchanges, and unusual funding rates.

The study asked whether a contract’s move over the weekend, while the stock market is closed, predicts the stock’s return from Monday’s open to Monday’s close. Across 374 stock-weekends, from 19 US stocks between February and July 2026, it did not (t = −1.2). Stocks tend to move together over a weekend, so these are far fewer than 374 independent observations.

The hypothesis registered in advance was a reversal. A trade betting that the weekend residual, the part of the contract’s weekend move not matched by the stock’s index price, would reverse on Monday lost about 0.37% per trade before costs (t = −2.22). Trading the other way, with the residual, made about 31.8 basis points per trade after costs in backtest, but a long-only control that ignored the signal made 31.5. Monday open-to-close returns were positive on average over those months, and that general market direction explained the apparent profit.

Binance and Hyperliquid do not serve US residents, so the study used the contracts only as a signal and assumed trades in the stocks themselves. The sample was also below the 500 observations I had set in advance as the minimum for a decision, and after this result I did not take the idea further.