WTI Edge 15-Min
Kalshi lists a fresh oil contract every fifteen minutes. Once the window opens the strike is locked — so we can tell you what it is actually worth, and what it costs to act.
Once a window opens, its reference price is locked. From that moment the contract's fair value is arithmetic rather than a forecast:
- S — the live oil price: a live WTI crude reference price that tracks the front-month future, checked every window against the settlement print Kalshi publishes our engine reads and scores against every Kalshi settlement (see the feed note below), refreshed on this page every ten seconds. The price itself stays inside the engine; the page shows Kalshi's own reference.
- K — the reference price locked at the window's open (for example $93.38).
- τ — time left in the window.
- σ — how much oil has actually been moving, measured over the last fifteen minutes.
There is no drift term. We are not claiming to know which way oil goes next — at this horizon nobody credibly does, and our own hourly model tested worse than the market's own pricing. Setting drift to zero is the honest choice, and it is what makes the number above a measurement rather than an opinion.
FREE · LIVE EVERY 15 MINUTES
Live fair value and the true cost of trading — KXWTI15M oil, every 15 minutes
What is this?
Same engine as the metals 15-minute tools, pointed at crude. Kalshi opens a fresh KXWTI15M contract every fifteen minutes asking whether WTI is higher at the window's close than at its open, rounded to 2 decimals (for example a locked reference of $93.38). It trades more contracts per window than 15-minute silver.
The catch nobody else mentions: Kalshi settles it on a Pyth oil index that has no free public copy. So the engine prices on a live WTI crude reference price that tracks the front-month future and checks it every window against the settlement print Kalshi publishes, re-anchoring when a contract roll pulls them apart. Measured over 176 settled windows, that input called the same up-or-down result as Kalshi 97.2% of the time.
Real-World Example
→ A Live Window
A window locks its reference at $93.38. Nine minutes in, oil is a few cents above it with six minutes left, and trailing volatility is running hot — oil in a supply scare moves far more per minute than gold.
That higher volatility is the whole lesson: the same few cents above the line are worth much less on oil than on gold, because oil can travel back through the strike in a minute. Fair value might come out near 60¢ where the same distance on gold would read 75¢.
Fee check: the taker fee is 0.07 × P × (1 − P) per contract — about 1.7¢ each way near these prices, ~3.5pp for a round trip before the spread. Most windows never offer that much.
✅Action: Read the gauge and the band, not the headline. When the book sits inside the fee band the honest answer is no trade, and on a volatile commodity the last few minutes of a window swing hard enough that a small gap is noise.
Bottom line: The oil window, priced honestly on a feed the public cannot read. Free, live every fifteen minutes, and the record starts from zero in public.
Full guide →Beta — a new record, starting now
This oil tool runs on the same engine as the gold and silver 15-minute tools, and on those, measured across thousands of settled windows, our number does not beat the Kalshi book — the side it flags still loses money after fees. The oil record restarted on September 28, 2026, when the engine moved to a new live price source, so it is too young to say anything yet.
The tool is live and free and the maths is the same maths. We are not going to tell you to trade it until the record says you should, and that record will be on this page either way.
Quick Answer
WTI Edge 15-Min prices Kalshi's KXWTI15M markets — one up-or-down contract per 15-minute window, settling on Pyth 1-minute candle closes of a feed Kalshi names but the public cannot read. Once a window opens its reference price is locked, so fair value becomes arithmetic: we compute it live from the distance to that strike, the time left, and realized volatility, with no directional call. We also draw the round-trip fee band, because near 50¢ it costs about 3.5¢ to get in and out and most windows offer less edge than that. Window open.
Current WTI window
Closes in 13:12
TOSS-UP
59% chance wti closes above $94.27, Kalshi's reference — it is above the line with 13:12 left. Too close to call. Kalshi has YES at 64¢.
A read of the model, not a call. On gold and silver, following the same arrow lost money after fees over thousands of windows; the wti record is too new to say more.
Closes below → NO | YES ← closes above← NO | YES →
Does Kalshi’s price agree with the math?
Kalshi is asking (YES)
64¢
63–64¢ · book as of 2s ago
Our math says (YES)
59¢
fair value · drift 0
Kalshi is asking 4.5¢ more than the math says YES is worth — outside the 3.9¢ round-trip cost band. That is worth a look, not a trade signal: we are logging these to see whether they beat the book over time, and we will publish the answer either way.
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Every signal graded in public, losers left on the board. See the record →
This window
- YES bid / ask
- 63¢ / 64¢
- Contracts traded
- 5,320
- Open interest
- 3,097
- Round-trip fee at fair
- 3.39¢
Next window
Opens at 1:45 AM ET. Its reference price locks at that moment — until then there is no strike to price against, which is why the card above only exists once a window is live.
Trade wti windows on KalshiRelated Tools
The fee is the whole story
Kalshi charges a quadratic taker fee on these markets — 0.07 × P × (1 − P) per contract. That works out to about 1.75¢ at 50¢, 1.47¢ at 70¢, and 0.63¢ at 90¢. Near the middle, where these contracts spend most of their lives, a round trip costs roughly 3.5¢ before the spread. Add a typical few-cent spread and the market has to be around two percentage points wrong just for you to break even.
That is why the gauge above draws a dead zone instead of a signal. Around ninety windows a dayis a lot of opportunities to pay a fee, and churning every window compounds the cost far faster than most people expect. If you want to see what a given entry actually costs, the Kalshi fee calculator does the arithmetic.
Why we can price these honestly
On the feed, because nobody else states it. Kalshi's settlement source for this series is listed as Commodities.Index.PYTHOIL/USD. That feed has no free public copy, so nobody outside Kalshi and Pyth can read the number these contracts actually settle on.
What we price on is a live WTI crude reference price that tracks the front-month future. Futures roll, and not on the expiry calendar: Kalshi's index moved from the October to the November contract on September 10, 2026, twelve days before October expired. A rolled contract can sit dollars away from the one Kalshi is settling on — so the engine checks that price every window against the settlement print Kalshi itself publishes, and re-anchors when a roll pulls them apart. While it re-measures (about one window) the page shows no reading, instead of quietly moving every number on the page.
Then we measured. Over 176 settled windows (September 24–28, 2026) that input called the same up-or-down result as Kalshi 97.2% of the time; the front-month future itself managed 96.5% over the same windows. Neither can reach 100%: about one window in ten settles within 2¢ of its strike, where the last tick decides it. Every settlement since is recorded against our own read at the close, so this number keeps being checked rather than assumed.
WTI 15-minute base rates
Measured across 2,469 settled windows. A window resolves YES when the closing price is at or above the reference price locked at its open — so the up-rate is close to, but not exactly, a coin flip, and the average move tells you how far these windows typically travel.
Windows settled
2,469
Finished up
52.0%
Avg move per window
$0.16
| Hour (ET) | Windows | Up rate | Avg move |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 PM | 100 | 42.0% | $0.10 |
| 8 PM | 104 | 53.8% | $0.15 |
| 9 PM | 106 | 52.8% | $0.12 |
| 10 PM | 108 | 52.8% | $0.09 |
| 11 PM | 112 | 48.2% | $0.10 |
| 12 AM | 114 | 44.7% | $0.10 |
| 1 AM | 112 | 49.1% | $0.16 |
| 2 AM | 102 | 52.0% | $0.17 |
| 3 AM | 100 | 51.0% | $0.20 |
| 4 AM | 109 | 52.3% | $0.18 |
| 5 AM | 112 | 53.6% | $0.20 |
| 6 AM | 111 | 52.3% | $0.17 |
| 7 AM | 108 | 53.7% | $0.23 |
| 8 AM | 108 | 44.4% | $0.21 |
| 9 AM | 108 | 54.6% | $0.22 |
| 10 AM | 107 | 63.5% | $0.22 |
| 11 AM | 107 | 56.1% | $0.21 |
| 12 PM | 104 | 56.7% | $0.17 |
| 1 PM | 101 | 49.5% | $0.18 |
| 2 PM | 103 | 46.6% | $0.12 |
| 3 PM | 104 | 61.5% | $0.13 |
| 4 PM | 51 | 39.2% | $0.17 |
| 5 PM | 78 | 51.3% | $0.13 |
| 6 PM | 100 | 60.0% | $0.05 |
The shadow record — not a track record
UnpromotedWhen the market drifts outside the cost band mid-window, we log it and grade it against what actually settled. Nothing here is a pick. No position was taken, no alert was sent, and none of it is scored in our track record. It exists so that the question “is there really an edge here?” gets answered with evidence instead of a claim — and we publish the answer either way.
Scored since Sep 28, 2026 — live price input checked every window against Kalshi settlement prints · n = 6 graded windows since. Earlier windows are kept, but graded a retired input and are not scored in this record.
Graded windows
6
Our Brier
0.2227
Market's Brier
0.2401
We beat the market by
+0.0174
Brier score is mean squared error on a probability — lower is better. We score our fair value at the moment the gap first opened, against the market's own mid at that same instant. A positive difference means we were closer to the truth than the price was; a negative one means the market was.
Promotion gate — all three must clear
- Beats the market's own pricing (Brier delta > 0) (0.0174) — cleared
- At least 3 weeks of record (0 / 21 days) — not yet cleared
- At least 60 graded windows (sample-size floor) (6 / 60 graded) — not yet cleared
Until all three clear, this stays research and the tool stays a fair-value instrument. If the record never clears them, we will say so here and leave it as an educational overlay.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does WTI Edge 15-Min beat the market?
We do not know yet, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. On gold and silver, the same engine measured across thousands of settled windows does not beat the Kalshi book — the side it flags wins slightly more than half the time and still loses money after fees. The oil record restarted on September 28, 2026, when we moved the engine onto a new live price source, so there is not enough of it to say anything. The maths on this page is sound and the tool is free; the record is what we are still earning, and it is published here either way.
How do Kalshi's 15-minute oil markets settle?
Each KXWTI15M contract asks whether WTI crude is up over a 15-minute window. It resolves YES if the close of the 1-minute Pyth PYTHOIL candle at the window's close is at or above the close of the candle at the window's open, rounded to 2 decimal places. The reference price locks the moment the window opens — before then there is no strike, which is why a fair value only exists once trading is live.
Can anyone read the feed Kalshi settles oil on?
Not publicly. Kalshi names Pyth's Commodities.Index.PYTHOIL/USD, and that feed has no free public copy. So we price on a live WTI crude reference price that tracks the front-month future and check it every window against the settlement print Kalshi itself publishes. When a contract roll pulls the two apart, the engine re-measures the gap from those prints and re-anchors — the page shows no reading for about one window while it does, instead of silently pricing the wrong contract. Measured over 176 settled windows, that input called the same up-or-down result as Kalshi 97.2% of the time. About one window in ten settles within 2¢ of its strike, which is why no proxy reaches 100%.
Why is fair value not 50¢ in the middle of an oil 15-minute window?
Because the strike is already fixed. At the open the contract genuinely is a coin flip. A few minutes in, with oil sitting above or below the locked reference, the odds are a specific number you can compute from the distance to the strike, the time left and how much oil has actually been moving: P(YES) = Φ((ln(S/K) − σ²τ/2) / (σ√τ)), with drift deliberately set to zero. It is arithmetic on a known strike, not a forecast of where oil goes next.
What does it cost to trade an oil 15-minute contract?
Kalshi charges a quadratic taker fee of 0.07 × P × (1 − P) per contract on these series — about 1.75¢ each way at 50¢, so roughly 3.5¢ for a round trip near the middle before the spread. The market has to be about two percentage points wrong after the spread just for a trade to break even. The tool draws that cost as a dead zone around fair value, and most of the time the book sits inside it.
When do the oil 15-minute markets trade?
On the energy clock rather than the metals one: through the week and into Friday night, then dark for the weekend. Those hours are Kalshi's call, so this page reads them from the windows Kalshi has actually listed instead of assuming a schedule, and says so when nothing is listed.
How is this different from the Oil Edge tool?
Oil Edge covers Kalshi's daily WTI ladder — many strikes on one contract that settles on the ICE front-month future. This tool covers a different product: a single up-or-down contract on a fifteen-minute window, where the strike is already locked and the question is what the current window is worth right now.
How much volume do the oil 15-minute markets have?
Over the last 100 settled windows to September 26, 2026, KXWTI15M traded about 1.4 times as many contracts as 15-minute silver — the fourth-busiest of Kalshi's fifteen-minute series. These are new products, so treat any volume figure as a snapshot rather than a settled fact.
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