Funding

Funding keeps perpetual prices anchored to their underlier. QFEX supports 24/7 trading, but funding is only active when we can reliably consume underlier prices from primary venues.

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At a Glance

• Funding is calculated and settled every 60 minutes.
• Funding premiums accrue during each symbol’s configured funding sessions.
• Outside those sessions, new premium samples are zero. An hourly window that includes an open session can still have a nonzero funding rate and payment.
• The live websocket funding stream shows the current implied final rate if the current window ended now.

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Funding Hours (Current)

The table shows standard funding sessions in each market’s local time. Holidays and temporary schedule overrides can change these hours. The gaps between the Japanese and Chinese equity sessions are lunch breaks. New premium samples are zero during these breaks; hourly settlement can still include premiums sampled before a break or market close. See the Specification Index for per-symbol reference-price schedules.

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Schedules and live rates

Funding sessions are configured separately from reference-price sessions and may differ from them. The public REST endpoint https://api.qfex.com/refdata exposes market_hours for reference-price sessions. It does not currently expose the separate funding schedule. See the refdata documentation for the response format. Use the funding stream for the current implied hourly funding rate.

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Methodology

Our calculation methodology closely follows the industry standard, with simplified parameters for greater transparency and efficiency. Key Parameters:

• Funding Interval: Every 60 minutes.
• Impact Notional: 1,000 USDC by default. GOLD-USD and US100-USD use 10,000 USDC.
• Interest Rate: None.
• Funding Dampening Divisor: 16 by default, applied after premium averaging.

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1. Premium Index

The Premium Index ($P$) represents the premium or discount of the contract relative to the spot price. It is calculated using the Impact Bid and Impact Ask prices from the orderbook. $$P = \frac{\max(0, \text{Impact Bid} - \text{Index}) - \max(0, \text{Index} - \text{Impact Ask})}{\text{Index}}$$ Where:

• Impact Bid: The average fill price to sell the Impact Notional amount.
• Impact Ask: The average fill price to buy the Impact Notional amount.

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2. Funding Rate

The final Funding Rate applied at the end of each 60-minute interval is based on a Time-Weighted Average (TWAP) of the Premium Index over that interval. This method assigns higher weight to more recent premium observations.

Units: Premiums and funding rates in these formulas are decimal fractions. For example, 0.001 is 0.1%, or 10 bps.

$$\bar{P} = \frac{\sum_{i=0}^{N-1} (i+1) \cdot P_i}{\sum_{i=0}^{N-1} (i+1)}$$ $$F_{\text{final}} = \frac{\bar{P}}{16}$$ Where:

• $P_i$ represents the premium samples.
• The weight $(i+1)$ increases for more recent samples (where $i=N-1$ is the most recent).
• $F_{\text{final}}$ is the calculated hourly funding rate before settlement rounding. The funding stream publishes the post-dampening rate.

Note: Unlike other exchanges, we do not apply a fixed interest rate component. The rate is purely the market-driven premium.

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Why Funding May Be 0

Funding can be zero for normal reasons:

• The entire settlement window is outside the symbol’s funding sessions, for example during a lunch break, overnight, on weekends, or during a configured holiday closure.

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Historical Funding Data and Account Payments

For settled funding payments on your account, use the authenticated GET /executions endpoint with execution_type=funding. It returns funding credits and charges, rather than the current implied funding rate. The same endpoint also includes fee rebates (fee_rebate) and referral rewards (referral_reward). The account execution history guide explains filtering and timestamp formats. We are continuing to improve market-wide historical funding-rate data by product. For live implied funding rates, use the WebSocket funding channel.