How to trade on Kalshi
Once your account is funded, trading on Kalshi comes down to a few simple mechanics that behave like any market: read the price, decide whether you disagree with it, take a position, and manage it. This walkthrough covers the actual moves, not the account setup.
The whole game is comparing the market's price to your own view of the odds. Everything below is in service of doing that cleanly and cheaply.
- Every Kalshi contract trades between 1 and 99 cents, and the price is the market's implied probability.
- To bet an event happens, you buy yes at its price.
- You don't have to wait for the event to resolve.
- A market order fills immediately by crossing the spread, which is fast but pays the taker fee.
Read the price as a probability
Every Kalshi contract trades between 1 and 99 cents, and the price is the market's implied probability. A contract at 63 cents means the market thinks the event is about 63% likely. Before you do anything, form your own estimate and compare it to the price. If you don't disagree with the price, there's no trade to make.
You only have an edge when your probability genuinely differs from the market's. Buying at 63 cents makes sense if you think the true chance is meaningfully higher than 63%; selling or buying the other side makes sense if you think it's lower.
Buy yes, or buy no
To bet an event happens, you buy yes at its price. To bet it doesn't, you buy no, which trades at 100 minus the yes price. If yes is 63, no is 37. Both are just two sides of the same market, and you pick whichever the price makes attractive relative to your view.
Your cost is the price times the number of contracts. Each contract pays out 100 cents if your side is right and 0 if it's wrong, so buying 10 yes contracts at 63 risks $6.30 to make $3.70. Thinking in those terms, risk versus reward against the true odds, is the core habit.
Hold or sell before settlement
You don't have to wait for the event to resolve. As the market moves, your contract's price moves with it, and you can sell at any time to lock in a profit or cut a loss, exactly like selling a stock. If you bought yes at 63 and it climbs to 80, selling banks the gain without waiting for the outcome.
Holding to settlement avoids the exit fee and captures the full payout if you're right, but it carries full all-or-nothing variance. Selling early gives up a sliver of expected value for certainty. Which is better depends on whether the current price is fair and how much you value banking the result.
Use the right order type
A market order fills immediately by crossing the spread, which is fast but pays the taker fee. A limit order rests at a price you set and only fills if the market comes to you, which often avoids the fee and gets you a better price, at the cost of maybe not filling. Since the taker fee is largest near 50 cents, patient limit orders matter most in coin-flip markets.
The disciplined default is to rest limit orders where you can and only cross the spread when speed genuinely matters. Over many trades, that single habit meaningfully lowers your cost of trading.