Cantor Fitzgerald Opens Kalshi Prediction Market to Hedge Funds

Odaily Planet Daily News: Cantor Fitzgerald has announced that it will open trading access to the prediction market platform Kalshi for institutional investors, providing event contract trading services to approximately 3,000 institutional clients, including family offices and hedge funds. According to The Wall Street Journal, Cantor Fitzgerald will act as a broker to arrange block trades for institutional clients, enabling them to participate in Kalshi's "yes/no" contract trading based on real-world event outcomes. The trading subjects cover various fields, including weather forecasts, commodity trends, and corporate performance. This collaboration marks a further step by traditional financial institutions into the prediction market space. Kalshi is an event trading platform regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), allowing users to bet through contracts on whether specific events will occur, such as economic data, policy changes, weather conditions, and business events. In recent years, prediction markets have garnered attention from investors, with proponents arguing that they can reflect collective expectations through market prices and provide risk-hedging tools for businesses and investment institutions. However, regulators and some market participants continue to scrutinize the boundary between prediction markets and gambling. (WSJ)