October RWA Perp Report: the market after the bell

RWA perps traded $829.4 billion in October, a record month and 29% more than September.

Most of the growth came while stock exchanges were closed. Across the 25 most traded US stock perps, half of October's volume traded outside NYSE regular hours, up from 42% in September. Fifteen of the 25 did more than half their trading off-hours.

The news calendar helps explain this trend. Brazil voted on a Sunday. Korea hit a circuit breaker before Seoul opened. SpaceX, Meta, Tesla and Intel all reported after the close. Each time, perps traded the news when it broke, not when the market reopened.

Brazil voted on a Sunday; perps traded it

Brazil held its presidential runoff on Sunday, October 25. US exchanges were shut until Monday. EWZ, the iShares MSCI Brazil ETF, could not trade until Blue Ocean's overnight session opened at 00:00 UTC.

EWZ perps traded through the count. Hourly volume rose from about $1 million on Sunday evening to $53.7 million in the 00:00 UTC hour on October 26. Between 20:00 UTC Sunday and 13:00 UTC Monday, EWZ perps traded $232 million, and open interest rose 154%, from $16 million to $41 million. Pyth priced 99% of that volume.

Korea traded the selloff before Seoul opened

Following a hotter-than-expected US CPI print on October 14, the KOSPI fell sharply in the next session, triggering a circuit breaker. It closed down 7.57%.

Perps moved first. SKHYNIX, SAMSUNG and EWY perps traded $474.4 million in the 23:00 UTC hour, six times a normal hour, and $651.5 million in the hour Seoul opened. From the CPI release to the Seoul close, the three traded $3.94 billion, 2.9 times the same hours in a typical week. Open interest rose 28%. Traders added exposure to the move as well as trading it.

SpaceX reported after the bell; the volume came in the first hour

SpaceX reported its earnings after the US close on October 20. SPCX perps traded $1.13 billion in the 20:00 UTC hour, 56 times the usual for that hour, and stayed five to 14 times above normal through the night and pre-market.

Over the next 24 hours, SPCX traded $7.15 billion, 5.3 times the same window in a typical week. Open interest slipped 4%. Positions turned over rather than building.

Tesla's Roadster reveal traded in the evening

Tesla unveiled the Roadster on the evening of October 15, US time. TSLA perps traded $111.5 million in the 01:00 UTC hour, 9pm in New York and 36 times a normal hour. Volume stayed six to 12 times above normal into the pre-market.

Over 24 hours, TSLA traded $1.17 billion, 4.1 times normal, and open interest rose 51%, from $128 million to $193 million. The volume came with new positions.

Two after-hours prints, two different books

Meta and Tesla both reported after the close on October 21. Meta's stock fell 18% after hours on its revenue guidance.

META perps traded $299.2 million in the 20:00 UTC hour, 67 times normal, and $841 million over the next 24 hours, 4.4 times a typical window. TSLA traded $194.8 million in the same hour and $869 million across the window, 3.9 times normal.

Open interest fell on both, by 10% for META and 9% for TSLA. Volume ran four to five times normal while positions closed: traders were taking risk off. Six days earlier, the Roadster night had added 51% to TSLA open interest.

Half the trading now happens after the bell

Every event above broke while US exchanges were closed. Two months of data show that pattern is now the normal state of the market.

The 25 most traded US stock perps did $272.3 billion in October, 21% more than September. 49.8% of that volume traded outside NYSE regular hours, up from 41.7% in September. Fifteen of the 25 traded more than half their volume off-hours, up from ten.

The growth came almost entirely outside the session. Post-market volume rose 139%, overnight 60% and pre-market 23%. Regular-hours volume rose 4%. Of the $46.5 billion added, 89% traded while NYSE was closed. Weekends were the exception, down 10%.

The open is still the busiest hour. The 13:00 UTC hour averaged $3.65 billion on October trading days, 63% more than the next busiest. What changed is the trading around it.

News sets the timing. Across 14 events over the two months, news that broke during US hours stayed there: AMD's $1 trillion day on September 21, Meta's Muse rally and Marvell's investor day all traded 73% to 85% in the regular session. News that broke outside those hours pulled volume with it: Brazil, Korea, the Roadster and four after-hours earnings prints traded 53% to 100% off-hours. Intel showed it again on October 29. INTC perps traded $781.3 million in the first hour after its earnings as the stock fell more than 20% after hours, and open interest rose 30% by morning.

Positions follow a daily rhythm. Open interest rose in 70% of pre-market sessions and on all eight weekends, and fell in 84% of post-market sessions. Traders build exposure before the bell and over weekends, and reduce it after the close.

Off-hours is also where DEXs gain share. DEXs carried 14.4% of top 25 volume in regular hours, 20.4% post-market, 20.7% overnight and 22.4% at weekends. Index perps were already a DEX market, with DEXs taking 71% of S&P 500 volume and 60% of Nasdaq-100.

Perps also trade at significantly higher volumes than tokenized versions of the same stocks on spot DEXs. In the seven days to October 29, tokenized stocks traded $1.95 billion on onchain spot DEXs. US stock perps traded $122.1 billion, about 63 times more. SpaceX traded 37 times more as a perp, Alphabet 42 times and SanDisk 249 times.

The bell still sets the rhythm. It no longer sets the limits.

October in numbers

RWA perps traded $829.4 billion in October, up 29.3% from September's $641.6 billion and the largest month in the tracked history. Daily volume averaged $26.8 billion. The busiest day was October 29, Intel's earnings day, at $47.7 billion.

Open interest ended the month at $14.36 billion, up 11.8%, after reaching a new high of $14.60 billion on October 26.

Asset ranking

Gold led at $104.3 billion. SOXL, the 3x leveraged semiconductor ETF, was second at $91.8 billion, followed by SanDisk at $80.6 billion, SK Hynix at $46.6 billion and oil at $44.0 billion.

Asset class ranking

Equities led with $384.4 billion, 46.3% of volume. Indices rose to $217.1 billion, 26.2%, from 17.1% in September; SOXL and KORU alone accounted for $120.9 billion of it. Commodities followed at $206.4 billion (24.9%) and FX at $21.5 billion (2.6%).

Venue ranking

Binance led at $451.6 billion, 54.5% of volume. OKX followed at $82.1 billion, then Hyperliquid at $77.6 billion, Bitget at $51.1 billion and Variational at $45.0 billion. The top five held 85.3% of volume, down from 86.9%. QFEX ($9.4 billion) and Veranta ($8.9 billion) entered the tracked set.

Market-data provider ranking

Venues sourcing Pyth prices accounted for $734.3 billion, 88.5% of October volume. Venue in-house pricing followed at 6.8%, mostly Variational and QFEX, then Chainlink at 3.6%. By class, Pyth priced 95.9% of equities, 91.6% of commodities and 81.1% of indices.

Methodology and sources

All figures are actuals for closed UTC days through October 31, pulled November 1 from RWA Markets via the Pyth partner API, built by @zinnresearch.

Market totals, asset classes, venues, providers and open interest use the partner perp-only series. September is restated on the same basis ($641.6 billion, against $637.85 billion published). Open interest is end-of-day, month-end to month-end. Provider attribution applies the current oracle map to each day, a different method from September's period-end estimate, so the two shares are not directly comparable.

Session figures cover the 25 most traded US-listed single-name stock perps over September and October, excluding ETFs, leveraged ETFs and indices. SKHY (ADR) and NBIS are included. Sessions follow the NYSE calendar in UTC; venues without hourly data, notably Variational, are excluded from session shares. October had 22 trading days and nine weekend days, against 21 trading days, Labor Day and eight weekend days in September.