Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang talks about Vera MGX compute nodes at GTC Berlin. The US chip maker held an AI conference from October 20th to 22nd, 2026.
Soren Stasz | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
As news of potential scandals surrounding Nvidia As CEO Jensen Huang began speaking slowly on Sunday, investors were faced with a simple question: What does that mean for the stock price?
One answer may be found in an obscure but growing corner of the market: perpetual futures.
At 3pm ET on Sunday, well before pre-market stock trading began, many traders began placing bearish bets on NVIDIA perpetual futures. Specifically, NVIDIA’s perpetual stock traded first, with Hyperliquid’s xyz contract falling to $180.15 on volume of $200 million by 3:30 p.m. ET. Both NVIDIA stock and perpetual stock fell below $178 overnight. It traded 7% lower on Monday.
Sunday’s trading highlights products that are increasingly filling a market void when traditional markets are offline.
In its simplest form, perpetual futures are highly leveraged bets that never expire. They can track almost any asset class and trade 24/7.
“Purp has filled a huge gap and void in the market,” said Rich Reppet, a former currency analyst and market structure expert. “These provide market access and price discovery when there is a market vacuum.”
When Iran launched a drone attack against Israel on Saturday, April 13, 2024, traditional markets were completely shut down and crypto-native exchanges offering perpetual futures were the only global proxy for real-time market sentiment for oil and the S&P 500. As that conflict escalated, an exchange called Perpetual Trading, or Purp, became the go-to for many weekend traders seeking information.
“It’s very clear at this point that the news doesn’t stop even if the markets are closed,” said CEO David Shamis. Hyper Liquid Strategy (PURR)a publicly traded financial company that invests in the HYPE token, which powers a decentralized exchange. “Investors want deep liquidity and price discovery when they need it, not just from nine to five.”
prediction market, options
Purps wasn’t the only novelty new product to see an increase in sales over the weekend. Anticipatory contract activity related to Hwang’s possible departure also spiked. Specifically, the Calci deal, which asks when Jensen Huang will step down as Nvidia’s CEO, went public just days before the bombshell report and traded for more than $105,000 on Sunday.
And in Nvidia’s pre-market options trading, which began trading just a few weeks ago, $15 million in option premiums were traded on Nvidia across approximately 40,000 contracts. Just over half of the contracts were puts, with just under $10 million in premium tied to puts, according to SpotGamma data.
Nvidia, 5 days
The arrival of new products highlights the growing need for more information as traditional financial exchanges extend market hours trading.
“When the market closes, you lose real-time feedback,” says Mike Ko, Option Action contributor. “The expansion of futures, prediction markets and after-hours trading will help fill that gap.”
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