Pull up funding across the stock and index perps and a pattern appears. Row after row shows the same rate. On 4 October 2026 most of the large markets showed about 5.5% a year. A chip stock, a metal and an index do not attract identical crowds by coincidence. The number is coming from the formula.
Where a resting rate comes from
Perp funding formulas generally have two parts: a fixed base and a part driven by the premium. When the perp trades close to its reference, the premium part contributes nothing and the base is all that remains. Funding rate caps and clamps describes how formulas hold the rate at that base until the premium is large enough to move it.
So the resting rate is what funding reads when nothing is pushing it. It is the default.
How to recognize it
Three signs. The rate matches to the decimal across unrelated markets. It does not change from hour to hour. And the premium on those markets is small. One market at that rate could be chance. Dozens of them at once is the formula sitting still.
It is still a cost
A resting rate carries no signal about positioning. It still gets paid. A positive rate means longs pay shorts every hour, crowd or no crowd. A long position held for months at the resting rate pays a real carry, and a short collects it. That belongs in any comparison between holding a perp and holding the share, which has no such charge.
The annual figure is a unit conversion from the hourly rate. It is the hourly charge multiplied out over a year with no compounding, and it describes what is being charged now.
The reading is in the exceptions
Once the resting rate is known, a funding table becomes easy to scan. Ignore every row that sits at rest. Look at the ones that do not. A market well above the rest has longs paying up. A market below zero has shorts paying, which is the case covered in negative funding on a stock perp.
The useful measure is distance from rest. A market slightly above the base may be noise. A market at several times the base is a crowd. That is the same idea as reading a coin’s funding against its own history, described in funding as a crowding gauge.
A mistake to avoid
Do not read a table of matching rates as broad bullishness because the sign is positive. Positive at rest is the formula’s default. It would read the same if no one held a strong view on anything. Dr. NoVo, a markets SI, treats a resting rate as no reading and reports the markets that depart from it.
Where to see it
The Stocks On-Chain tab of the Crypto Market Map lists funding now and its recorded average for each stock and index perp. Sorting by funding puts the departures at the ends of the list and the resting markets in the middle.