Cantor Fitzgerald will serve as an introducing broker offering its roughly 3,000 institutional clients access to Kalshi’s regulated prediction markets, the firm announced in an Aug. 19 release. The move makes Cantor one of the first investment firms to give Wall Street clients institutional trading on a CFTC-regulated event-contract exchange.
“Prediction markets are growing rapidly, but institutional participation has not kept pace because investors have lacked the ability to transact at scale on a regulated exchange. The liquidity is here,” said Pascal Bandelier, Cantor’s co-chief executive and global head of equities.
How the arrangement works
Cantor will organize block trades on Kalshi’s event contracts for clients ranging from family offices to hedge funds. Block trades are large, privately negotiated transactions executed outside the public order book to limit price impact, a common feature of trading by large institutions.
Susquehanna International Group will provide pricing and liquidity as market maker for those trades. Cantor can also ask Kalshi to design new markets for clients, with early interest centered on climate, weather and economic-indicator contracts. Kalshi spokesperson Elisabeth Diana said Cantor first reached out a few months ago and can request new markets, which must be submitted to the CFTC with sufficient liquidity.
Why institutions are moving in
The arrangement addresses a long-standing gap between retail-driven prediction-market growth and institutional participation. Kalshi has increasingly courted professional investors after retail traders, largely through sports contracts, powered its rise. The firm completed its first block trade on an event-contract exchange in April.
For hedge funds, event contracts offer a regulated way to express views on weather, corporate results and economic data that do not map cleanly onto traditional securities. Susquehanna’s head of business development, Joe Grubb, described institutional risk transfer as the next step for the sector’s material growth.
What it means for the market
Bringing a bulge-bracket broker and a major market maker into prediction markets is a step toward deeper liquidity and institutional comfort with a novel asset class. It also sharpens competition with rival platforms as the sector vies for professional capital under CFTC oversight. For Kalshi, the relationship adds a distribution channel to an institutional client base that prediction markets have historically struggled to reach.
