LEARN
The arithmetic behind a Kalshi position.
What a contract really costs, what it has to beat, how size is derived, and how the thing actually settles — written against the real trade tape. Everything here describes the mechanics and the mathematics; none of it is advice, and nothing here tells you what to trade.
THE ARITHMETIC
What a position costs and what it has to beat. Paid whether or not it is understood.
Your real break-even
A 50¢ contract does not break even at 50%. The fee and the crossed spread move the bar, worked out in cents at every price.
Bet sizing, and the arithmetic behind it
The Kelly fraction derived for a contract that settles at $1 or $0, worked at real prices, with the fee inside it — and why the number it returns is larger than almost anyone runs.
When ten bets are one bet
Every sizing rule assumes a position stands alone. On an event exchange most do not, and a book that looks diversified can be one concentrated wager.
A price is a probability, until it isn't
Why the reading works, the two documented places it fails, and why a 95% win rate bought at 95¢ is worth precisely nothing.
THE EXCHANGE
How Kalshi is built, and what the construction does to a trade.
How Kalshi works
Contracts, prices as probabilities, makers and takers, and settlement, mapped against one full day of tape: 7.33 million trades.
Order types and execution
Limit against market, maker against taker, and why buying NO at 40¢ is the same trade as selling YES at 60¢.
Settlement and resolution risk
A contract pays out because a named source said a named number crossed a named threshold — not because the event happened. The gap is where positions die.
Kalshi fees, measured
The taker formula, the maker discount, and what a real week of trading actually paid, worked at every price.
Strategy claims, checked
Where edge can exist, the spread and fee arithmetic that eats it, and what published research finds.
REFERENCE
The vocabulary and the tape, for when you are already trading.
Prints, sweeps, and blocks
How to read the public tape: what a print carries, what a sweep is on a single order book, and why blocks never appear.
What whale trades look like
How outsized flow is detected market by market, why some whales are manufactured, and the biggest publicly reported prints.
What is a sweep?
The word means something different on a single-book exchange than in options flow. What a Kalshi sweep is, measured from the tape.
Prediction market slang
Whales, sweeps, fades, rulescucked: the vocabulary traders actually use, each term defined against real prints.
Glossary
Every term on the tape defined in one sentence each, from event contract to rulescucked.
Alerts lists every alert the Discord channel has sent, with the outcome where the market has resolved. Free to read.
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