Issue #02 • Week of September 13, 2026

The Pursuit of Probability

Prediction markets are easiest to understand one market at a time. This week made the bigger picture harder to miss.

Rates, football, small-business risk and institutional market data all ended up speaking the same language: probability. The Fed’s quarter-point hike had reached 88% on Kalshi before Wednesday’s decision.

The NFL opening weekend pushed activity to new highs. And two new partnerships showed prediction markets moving deeper into the infrastructure businesses and institutions already use.

That is what an emerging category looks like when it starts to spread: less like a destination, more like a layer across the things people are trying to understand and manage.

Freedom to Forecast

Courts and policymakers continued to work through how federally regulated prediction markets fit within existing state and tribal frameworks this week.
In California, the Ninth Circuit sent part of a tribal gaming case back to the district court for further consideration. In New York, a federal judge heard arguments in an ongoing case involving the CFTC and state regulation, with no ruling yet. And in Texas, lawmakers held hearings on prediction markets, where Kalshi participated in discussions around market structure and consumer protection.
The broader legal framework is still developing, with several important questions yet to be resolved.
Join the movement. Join Freedom to Forecast.

Power, Priced

The American Power Index crossed the midpoint this week. On Monday, Kalshi’s Senate-control market moved to 52% Democratic / 48% Republican, while KPOW reached Even for the first time since early May. As of Friday morning, the index reads +2.70 D.
KPOW turns a sprawling question, who holds political power in America, into one market-based number. It combines current control with forward-looking signals for the House, Senate and presidency, plus government-function inputs. The formula is weighted 25% to present control and 75% to future expectations, on a scale from +50D to +50R. It is an indicator, not a poll or a tradable contract, and its inputs can move as market prices change.
One chart, a lot of politics.
Learn more about how KPOW works

New at Kalshi

Prediction-market data gets institutional plumbing: BMLL announced today that it is adding Kalshi’s historical market data to its institutional platform. That gives quantitative, macro and systematic teams a way to research event-contract prices inside the same kinds of workflows they use for other market data. BMLL is normalizing Kalshi’s historical order books into the same schema it uses for CME Event Contracts. The larger signal: probability data is becoming something institutions can plug into existing research infrastructure.
Read more here
Risk tools go local: Kalshi is partnering with the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Greater Washington Hispanic Chamber of Commerce to bring risk-management education and tools to a network representing more than five million Hispanic Business Enterprises through 260+ local chambers and associations.
Read more here

Kalshi in Culture

Football, at market scale: Kalshi recorded $4.89 billion in volume across opening weekend, including a $2.433 billion single-day record on Sunday. More than $590 million traded on individual Week 1 NFL contracts, with Cowboys–Giants alone accounting for $112.8 million.
The Emmys kept traders honest: Favorites won 14 of the 18 categories Kalshi tracked. Four went the other way, Slow Horses, Allison Janney, Matthew Rhys and Sally Field, with Field delivering the night’s biggest surprise.

Markets at Work

This week’s small-business examples made the hedging use case unusually concrete.
Zest Tea, a Maryland tea company, worked with Kalshi around tariff and container-freight risk. Kalshi says 28Wishes, an ice cream shop whose sales fall about 20% when temperatures dip below 70 degrees or it rains, spends roughly $20 a day on weather markets; during cold snaps, those payouts can cover up to $1,500 a month, or about 43% of its rent.
Tea, ice cream, freight, weather. Different uncertainties; same idea: turn an unpredictable business cost into something you can plan around.
Learn how small businesses are using Kalshi

Seen in the Wild

Pete Sampras explaining price discovery is a sentence prediction markets didn’t have a year ago.

Meme of the Week

No explanation needed.

Think you’ve got a better one? Send your best Kalshi or prediction market meme to Newsletter@kalshi.com. If we feature it, we’ll send you some Kalshi merch.

Submit: Newsletter@kalshi.com

Behind the Market

No one sent us a question this week, so we’re starting.

For Tarek: What’s one thing you’re irrationally confident will happen in the next five years, and what probability would you put on it?

We’ll get his answer for the next issue.

Got something better? Ask anyone at Kalshi anything: markets, memes, weird office lore, whatever you’re curious about.

Submit: Newsletter@kalshi.com

One More Thing

Resident Evil opens Friday, and the critics have apparently survived Raccoon City.

The movie is sitting at 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. Kalshi’s live forecast is currently 95.3%, with traders putting 57% on the final score finishing above 95.

The zombies are finally fresh.

Check out Kalshi’s live forecast

Outcomes discussed may not be not representative of overall customer performance or success. Past results are not necessarily indicative of future performance