Hedge Funds Hire Traders for Prediction Markets
A top options trading firm is now hiring traders to bet on prediction markets, expanding the scope of early-career quantitative talent. These roles involve trading on outcomes related to events like weather and geopolitics. The move highlights a growing demand within hedge funds for talent with a blend of quantitative and event-driven analysis skills.
- The firm leading this expansion is Susquehanna International Group (SIG), a quantitative trading giant known for its options trading and sports betting analytics. This move into prediction markets represents a new frontier for their established expertise in pricing complex, probability-weighted outcomes. - Prediction markets have seen explosive growth, with combined monthly trading volumes on top platforms Kalshi and Polymarket surging from under $100 million in early 2024 to over $13 billion by the end of 2025. The total combined trading volume for these two platforms exceeded $37 billion in 2025. - Institutional interest is solidifying the market's legitimacy; for instance, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the NYSE, invested in Polymarket, while Robinhood has partnered with Kalshi to offer prediction market contracts on its platform. Tradeweb, a major operator of electronic marketplaces, has also partnered with Kalshi to expand institutional access. - The talent profile for these new roles blends traditional quantitative skills with a deep understanding of event-driven analysis. Job descriptions emphasize proficiency in Python (specifically pandas and numpy), statistical modeling, and the ability to translate ambiguous, real-world events into structured trading models. - Hedge funds are entering this space not just for speculation, but for more precise risk hedging. Unlike traditional financial instruments which act as proxies, prediction market contracts allow funds to hedge against specific, isolated event risks, such as a regulatory decision or a geopolitical outcome. - The primary platforms for this activity are Kalshi, which is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and the decentralized, crypto-native platform Polymarket. Kalshi recently hit a record daily trading volume of over $1 billion during the Super Bowl. - This trend is creating a new career path for quantitative talent, sometimes referred to as "Information Finance" or "InfoFi". It treats the probability of real-world events as a tradable asset class, requiring traders to build complex models for real-time fair value assessment of non-financial outcomes. - The growth has spurred a startup ecosystem around the prediction markets, with venture capitalists funding new companies focused on analytics, fund management, and aggregated trading platforms for markets on Kalshi and Polymarket.
