🤝Placing your first trade

When ready to place your first trade, navigate to a market via the Markets or the Explore page. In this example, we'll be placing a trade on the "Congress passes law to force TikTok sale?" market.

Before placing a trade, it's important to note the Yes/No prices of the contract.

How prices are calculated

Prices on Kalshi should be interpreted as probabilities. Remember that every contract will pay out $1 if it is correct when it expires. If some contract has a 40% chance of being answered Yes, the expected value of the Yes side of that associated Kalshi contract is 40¢. If an event becomes more likely because of some recent news, then the expected value of its contracts will change, and people will be willing to pay a new amount for it. Thus, the prices on Kalshi should reflect the probabilities for different events and will fluctuate with time.

In this example, let's say after examining the prices of the Yes/No sides of the contract, I want to buy contracts on the "Yes" side.

I can use either a quick order or a limit order to place my trade.

Quick order

A Quick Order, also known as a market order, is a request to immediately buy a specific number of contracts at the best available price.

Quick orders execute with no delay. For this reason, quick orders are the simplest and fastest way to make a trade on Kalshi.

When placing a Quick Order, specify the quantity and direction (Yes or No) you want, and Kalshi will get you those contracts as cheaply as possible. If your order is large, there may not be enough shares available at the best price to fulfill your desired quantity. This means your order can span multiple prices.

Consider a market where the Yes sides of 500 contracts are offered at the best price of 10¢, and more are offered at 12¢. If you place a quick order for 1000 contracts, you’ll buy 500 at 10¢ each and another 500 for 12¢ each, for an average price of 11¢. The order panel accounts for this automatically; it would show you an average price of 11¢ in this example.

Limit order

A Limit Order is a request to buy a specific number of contracts at a specific price or better.

For example, you could place a limit order to buy the Yes side of up to five contracts for ten cents each or cheaper. This type of order could result in trades that occur sometime in the future, or possibly never at all. However, it is guaranteed that any trades will occur at the specified price or better. Use limit orders when you want precise control over the prices of your trades and are willing to wait. Limit orders are also exempt from trading fees.

After placing my trade through either a limit order or a quick order, I can track the performance of my position from the portfolio page.

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