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Prediction Markets: How Sure Is the Bet?

February 27, 2026 | 10 minutes reading time | By Jeffrey Kutler and David Weldon

A largely retail and recreational phenomenon is also being sold as "crowd wisdom" for business planning, economic analysis and risk management. An institutional buy-in is underway, with financial market organizations out in front.

A strategic partnership last October connected the biggest name in financial market infrastructure with the prediction market sensation Polymarket. Intercontinental Exchange committed to invest up to $2 billion in a company then valued at $8 billion and now well above $10 billion, as is the valuation of competing prediction platform Kalshi.

“Our investment blends ICE, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, which was founded in 1792, with a forward-thinking, revolutionary company pioneering change within the decentralized finance (DeFi) space,” said ICE Chair and CEO Jeffrey C. Sprecher. “There are opportunities across markets which ICE together with Polymarket can uniquely serve, and we are excited about where this investment can take us.”

On February 11, ICE unveiled a product of the collaboration: Polymarket Signals and Sentiment, offering “normalized data feeds representing Polymarket’s prediction markets.” In other words, “crowdsourced probability assessments as market signals.”

“It’s so rare for new datasets like this to become available at such a quick pace,” stated Chris Edmonds, president of ICE’s Fixed Income and Data...

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Topics: Data, Geopolitical, Investment Management, Stress Testing & Scenario Analysis

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