The stock exchange is shut at midnight. Two instruments now offer a price on a stock anyway. One is the stock token. The other is the stock perp. They are often mentioned together, and they are different designs. Share, stock token, stock perp compares all three instruments. This article looks only at the hours when the share is not trading.

The token’s answer: put the stock on a chain

Robinhood issues nearly two hundred tokenized stocks and ETFs on Robinhood Chain. Each is a contract with a supply. Because it sits on a chain, it can change hands at any hour.

Its weak point at night is the price. Robinhood publishes a live bid and ask for each token, and outside market hours that quote goes wide. On Sunday 4 October 2026 the AMC token was bid at 2.72. The ask was 11.80. The stock had closed near 2.80. A quote like that has a midpoint, and the midpoint is not a price, as a wide quote is not a price explains.

A few stock tokens also trade in on-chain pools, which price them all week. Most have no pool deep enough to price.

The perp’s answer: track the stock without holding it

A stock perp is a contract that follows a reference price. On Hyperliquid, outside teams list these markets on separate books. They trade around the clock, weekends included. They settle in a stablecoin and hold no shares.

Its weak point is different. The perp does trade at midnight, so it has a real last price. What it lacks is the stock behind it. It stays near its reference through funding, a payment between longs and shorts charged every hour. Leverage is available, so a position can be liquidated while its holder sleeps. Stock perps, explained has the full mechanism.

What each one’s data says at night

A token’s supply is readable at any hour, though it may not move. Supply did not change over the weekend of 3 to 4 October 2026. So on a weekend the token’s supply shows what already exists, and its quote says little.

A perp’s data keeps moving. Mark price, funding and open interest all update through the night. That makes the perp the more informative of the two off hours. It is still a market price on another venue, carried by far less money than the cash market.

What neither one is

Neither is the stock exchange. Neither says where the share will trade when the exchange reopens. When they disagree with each other, and with Friday’s close, the disagreement is information about thin markets as much as about the stock. One stock, four prices on a weekend lays the prices side by side.

What a token entitles its holder to, and the terms of any perp, are for the issuer’s and the venue’s own documentation.

Where NoVo shows both

The Stocks On-Chain tab on the Crypto Market Map carries every stock token and every stock and index perp. A token price that is not the live midpoint is marked with an approximately sign.