Kalshi Account Mode

Kalshi Account Mode (AccountMode = Kalshi) is a fully collateralized event-contract risk mode for trading Kalshi prediction markets through T4. Event contracts are binary: each contract settles at the Resolved Value (normally $1.00) or at $0. Instead of margining positions, the account reserves the worst-case settlement cost in cash at order time — cash is the only quantitative risk limit in this mode.

Key differences from the futures risk modes:

• No margin, ever. Margin, Day Margin, Full Margin and Margin Power are always 0 for Kalshi accounts.
• No Max Position and no Max Clip Size checks.
• Premium reserves capital for both buys and sells — a sell (short/NO) is collateralized at the settlement value minus the price.
• Working orders reserve immediately. Cash is consumed as soon as an exposure-increasing order starts working, not at fill time — including estimated fees.
• Trading is restricted to the Kalshi prediction-market exchanges (KLSH_POp; DVKLSH_POp for the demo listing). Orders for any other market are rejected pre-trade.

Order cost is computed from the contract's Resolved Value and the order price:

• Resolved Value is read from the parent firm contract's margin value for the contract, and defaults to 1.00 (the standard binary payout) when nothing is configured. Normally it is left unset.
• Reducing orders reserve nothing. A new order first offsets existing opposite exposure (net position not already consumed by other working orders); only the portion that increases exposure reserves premium. A position flip reserves only the increasing portion.
• Estimated fees and commissions are reserved alongside premium for new fill volume, so available cash reflects the full expected cash impact of the order up front. Accounts with Fees set to None reserve no fees.
• Commission rates are per T4 lot, and Kalshi volume is fractional. One full Kalshi contract is 100 T4 lots (the market's volume scale), and the premium formulas above are stated per full Kalshi contract. Commission rates, however, are configured per T4 lot — so a fee of 2¢ per full Kalshi contract must be entered as 0.0002 (100 lots × 0.0002 = $0.02). Entering 0.02 would charge 100× the intended fee.
• Order revisions are re-gated. A revision recomputes the reservation from the proposed price/volume and charges the difference — a price-only revise that increases the reservation consumes cash and can be rejected, while a volume decrease releases its reservation (reserved fees are not refunded).
• Fills re-price the reservation. Once an order fills, the position's premium is recomputed from the actual average open price — a market order's conservative pre-fill reservation is replaced by the real cost of the fill. A closing fill releases the position's premium entirely and books realized P&L into available cash; fees on the closing volume are charged at fill time (reducing orders never reserve them up front).

Evaluated in order; the first failure rejects the order. Orders that reduce or flatten exposure pass the blocked-state and active-time gates.

1. Market gate — the market must belong to a Kalshi prediction-market exchange; anything else is rejected with “Market not supported in Kalshi risk mode”.
2. Blocked states — an exposure-increasing order is rejected when the account status is Blocked or Loss Limit Exceeded (with pre-trade risk enabled), or when the firm or the parent account is blocked.
3. Active time — outside the account's active-time window, exposure-increasing orders are rejected.
4. Cash gate (the sole quantitative limit) — the order is accepted only when AvailableCash + NewOrderCost >= 0, where NewOrderCost is the incremental premium plus estimated fees (both negative cash). The rejection message shows the values: “Insufficient cash for Kalshi order cost. AvailableCash:[…] NewOrderCost:[…] = Premium:[…] + Fees:[…]”.
5. Firm and parent-account cash pools (where applicable) — the same order cost must also be covered by the firm's available cash when firm-level pre-trade risk is enabled, and by the parent account's pool when the account belongs to a Related Accounts group. Firms with pre-trade risk disabled and accounts without a parent group skip the respective check.

Not applied in this mode: Max Position, Max Clip Size, and all margin checks.

Account with a $500.00 balance, no positions, contracts settling at $1.00, and a fee of 2¢ per full Kalshi contract (configured as 0.0002 per T4 lot; reserved on increasing volume only). Volumes below are full Kalshi contracts:

Two fills, two different outcomes: a market order's conservative reservation is re-priced down on fill (step 4 releases $45.00), while a limit order filling at its own limit price converts the reservation to actual cost with no cash change (step 6, estimate = actual).

Step 9 is the working-vs-filled distinction in one row: while the reducing sell was merely working (steps 7–8) it cost nothing and released nothing; only the fill releases the closed position's premium, books the realized P&L into available cash, and charges the closing fees.

If the position from order #3 (long 100 at an average of 55¢) is held to settlement and the market settles at $0, the realized loss on it is the $55.00 premium already paid plus its $2.00 fee — exactly the cash reserved after the fill. That is the fully collateralized design.

Unlike the futures option modes, Kalshi mode does not clamp unrealized P&L by premium — binary contracts carry real economic value on both sides until settlement, so UPL flows through unclamped in both directions.