Equity perps are a way to trade the price of a stock without ever owning the stock.
The idea comes from crypto.
Stocks trade on a schedule. Markets open at a set time, close at a set time, and outside those hours the price sits still no matter what happens in the world. Crypto never had that constraint, and a new instrument is starting to close the gap between the two: equity perpetual futures, or equity perps.
An equity perp is a derivative contract that tracks the price of a stock, like a single company's shares or a stock index, without an expiration date and without transferring ownership of the actual shares.
