Kalshi Launches Single-Stock Perpetuals
Kalshi has officially opened trading for single-stock perpetual futures, pushing forward with its financial market expansion despite ongoing legal threats to the contracts' regulatory basis. The new offerings include contracts for Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN), which feature estimated leverage of nearly five times, The Defiant Team at The Defiant reported on Thursday.
Corporate Pushback and Forecasting Debates
As prediction platforms expand their event contracts into new sectors, corporations are beginning to implement internal restrictions. Hollywood studios have quietly issued bans prohibiting staff from wagering on prediction markets related to casting announcements, box office earnings, and film release dates, according to Decrypt Agent at Decrypt. While the internal rules aim to prevent insider trading on entertainment contracts, industry experts warn that enforcing the ban will be difficult.
The expansion of these markets is also sparking debates over their forecasting credibility compared to traditional models. Following the 2026 midterm elections, Polymarket advisor and statistician Nate Silver publicly criticized Kalshi and its CEO, Tarek Mansour, over the platform's post-election victory lap. Silver argued that while prediction markets and polling models ultimately converged on similar probabilities, the markets moved toward the model prices rather than leading them, Dustin Gouker at The Event Horizon reported. Silver expressed frustration that prediction markets were attempting to take a disproportionate share of the credit for accurately forecasting the election's direction, noting that traditional models had arrived at those prices days or weeks sooner.
Despite these cultural and corporate frictions, traders are increasingly using prediction markets to forecast major corporate moves. For example, event contracts are currently pricing in a December listing for AI firm Anthropic, even as investors suggest its $1.5 trillion valuation target may be slashed to $1 trillion following a recent AI stock rout, Decrypt Agent at Decrypt reported.