Cantor Fitzgerald prediction markets access is now live for roughly 3,000 of the bank’s institutional clients, including hedge funds and family offices, following the launch of a dedicated block-trading desk on 19 August that makes Cantor one of the first full-service investment banks to offer this route to a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)-regulated prediction market.
The desk operates through Kalshi, the event-contract exchange that received its CFTC designation as a Derivatives Clearing Market on 3 November 2020 and was granted permission to offer intermediated futures trading on 17 January 2025. Cantor acts as an Introducing Broker (a firm that arranges trades but does not hold client funds or positions itself), passing orders to Kalshi’s block-trading facility away from the exchange’s central order book.
How the Cantor Fitzgerald Prediction Markets Desk Works
Pricing and liquidity come from Susquehanna Predictions, the dedicated prediction-markets arm of Susquehanna International Group. Susquehanna established that desk in 2023, making it the first quantitative trading firm to build a standalone prediction-markets business, and it now serves as Kalshi’s flagship market maker.
Kalshi’s block-trading rulebook sets a minimum of 25,000 contracts per trade and restricts participation to Eligible Contract Participants (ECPs), the regulatory category covering large institutions such as hedge funds, banks, and certain family offices. The rulebook was last updated in May 2026, according to The Industry Spread. Neither Cantor nor Kalshi has disclosed which futures commission merchant (FCM, the firm that holds margin and clears trades) carries the Cantor flow, or what initial margin an event-contract block attracts.
The business sits inside Cantor’s Global Markets division, under co-CEOs Pascal Bandelier and Christian Wall. In announcing the launch, they said the firm is applying ‘institutional access to new markets’ built over ‘eighty years’ in equities and fixed income to the new asset class.
Max Crowley, VP of Business Development at Kalshi, said in the Cantor Fitzgerald press release: ‘Cantor brings deep institutional relationships and significant experience executing in equities and fixed income markets. We’re looking for partners who think creatively about where event contracts fit in a client’s portfolio, and who see the new use cases and hedging opportunities that come with it. Cantor is exactly that kind of firm.’
Why Event Contracts Appeal Beyond Traditional Hedges
A conventional hedge works by taking a position in a financial instrument whose price moves when the underlying risk materialises. An event contract skips the price step entirely: the contract pays out based on whether a specific outcome occurs, not on how markets subsequently react to it.
Consider a fund with exposure to Apple’s supply chain. Using equity or options, it can hedge against a fall in Apple’s share price after earnings. With an event contract on Kalshi, it can take a position directly on whether iPhone unit sales exceed a stated number, regardless of how the stock moves on the day. The hedge is tighter because it targets the specific risk, not a proxy for it.
Joe Grubb, head of business development at Susquehanna Predictions, set out the firm’s view in comments reported by The TRADE: ‘We believe the next area of material growth for prediction markets will be large institutional risk transfer. We are able to price and execute custom, tailored contracts for institutional counterparties desiring to hedge both general market and bespoke industry risk currently unserved by traditional insurance markets.’
Cantor’s clients can propose new contracts tailored to risks such as AI supply-chain disruptions or computing costs. No timeline has been given for those custom contracts to launch.
The Wall Street Journal reported that contracts already available cover categories from weather and commodity prices to corporate results. Cantor also expects to add trading venues beyond Kalshi over time, though no timeline has been given for that either.
Part of a Broader Wall Street Build-Out
Cantor’s move extends a pattern of institutional intermediaries opening routes into prediction markets. Clear Street became the first institutional FCM on Kalshi’s exchange and clearing house on 1 May 2026, targeting block trading and swap structures for ETF issuers, according to Markets Media. Marex has partnered with both Kalshi and Polymarket. Talos has connected market makers to Kalshi through existing trading infrastructure.
The first custom block trade of this kind closed in April, when a Houston-based environmental hedge fund took a position on the outcome of a California carbon-allowance auction, brokered by Greenlight Commodities with liquidity provided by Jump Trading.
For retail investors holding shares in banks or brokers with prediction-markets exposure, the direction of travel is clear: event contracts are moving from a retail curiosity into the institutional plumbing. The test is whether the 25,000-contract block minimum and ECP restrictions keep volumes concentrated enough that liquidity remains deep, or whether a fragmented market across multiple venues dilutes it as more intermediaries enter.
