Prediction market guides
Depending what your area of interest or expertise is, from politics to movies to Taylor Swift, there’s likely a prediction market for you. Find below links to trading guides for some of the most popular prediction market topics:
- Politics
- Pop Culture
- Economy
- Sports
- Mention Markets
- Weather
- Rotten Tomatoes
- Netflix
- Spotify
- Billboard Music Charts
- TikTok
Trading topics
Prediction markets span across politics, pop culture, the economy, and sports, and beyond.
Politics, and more specifically the 2024 election, is what put top prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket on the map. Political prediction markets have been growing since the mid 2010s, when PredictIt, the original political prediction marketplace, launched.
Other popular subcategories include cabinet markets, House and Senate elections, approval ratings, bills, and court markets, to name a few.
Examples:
Who will win the 2028 U.S. presidential election?
Will the government shut down this year?
Popular political markets:
Presidential and midterm elections (U.S. and global), Cabinet markets, presidential approval ratings, party control of legislative bodies, Supreme Court rulings.
Pop culture prediction markets bring stock market-like speculation to the arts: music, film, and celebrity gossip (ok ok – not quite art). Traders can wager on outcomes for the Grammys, Academy Awards, Rotten Tomatoes scores, and so much more.
Examples:
Will Taylor Swift release another album in 2025?
Who will win Best Picture at the Oscars?
Popular entertainment markets:
Oscars, Grammys, Spotify charts, Rotten Tomatoes scores.
Economic and business prediction markets focus on real-world financial indicators. These include interest rate decisions, unemployment numbers, GDP growth, inflation reports, and major tech earnings. Rather than relying on opinion or sentiment, these markets often react to hard data and economic calendars.
Examples:
Will the Fed raise interest rates at its next meeting?
Will the U.S. unemployment rate fall below 4% this quarter?
Popular economic and business markets:
Federal Reserve rate hikes, CPI inflation data, GDP growth, business deliverables, mention markets
Until 2025, sports event contracts were only available on Polymarket, which is inaccessible in the U.S. without nefarious workarounds like using a VPN. Make make real-money sports predictions, sports bettors had to bet with a legal sportsbooks, if there was one, in their state, or turn to sketchy offshore sites and illegal bookmakers if they wanted to bet on the Super Bowl, March Madness, The Masters, etc.
That quickly changed, as Crypto.com was the first to test the limits and introduce sports event contracts for the NFL and college football playoffs. Kalshi, a CFTC-regulated prediction market, followed their lead and has yet to look back. Most recently, Kalshi facilitated over $100 million in trades on the 2025 Masters, much of which came during the tournament.
Kalshi’s leap into sports has turned the sports betting industry upside down, and sportsbook leaders like DraftKings and FanDuel are definitely paying attention.
We’ll have to wait and see what becomes of sports event contracts, and the upcoming CFTC roundtable on prediction markets will certainly shed some light. Already, new sports-focused prediction market companies, like SI Predict, have announced that they will join the space.
Examples:
- Will will win the Masters?
- Who will be the next head coach of the Chicago Bears?
Popular sports markets:
Football, golf, baseball, basketball, etc.
How to trade on prediction markets
To trade on prediction markets, you first must choose a platform, such as Kalshi, PredictIT, Polymarket, Metaculus, or Manifold Markets.
Those are the top prediction market sites, with Kalshi and Polymarket being the undisputed leaders.
What’s the difference between Kalshi and Polymarket? Mainly that Kalshi is federally regulated by the CFTC, accessible to Americans in all 50 states and other U.S. jurisdictions, while Polymarket is banned in the U.S.
Here’s a quick breakdown of who should use each prediction market platform:
- Kalshi: U.S.-based users looking to risk real money on a regulated platform.
- Polymarket: Traders who are outside of the U.S., but looking for a wide variety of markets, liquidity within those markets, and safe and trustworthy transactions.
- Manifold: Casual traders who prefer risking play money.
- PredictIt: Political traders in the U.S. who are looking for another option in addition to Kalshi.
- ForecastEx: Institutional traders with large bankrolls.
Once you select a prediction market platform(s), you need to fund your account using one of the available deposit options (unless it’s a fake-money prediction market like Manifold). From there, select a market and make your first prediction by buying contracts. After that you have the choice to sell contracts before the market resolves, too.
For instance, if you bought a contract at 40¢ and the price rises to 70¢, you can sell for a profit before the event concludes. That’s where a lot of strategy comes into play—buying low, selling high, or even shorting contracts you believe are overpriced.
The more you understand market dynamics, news flow, and actionable metrics within a category, the more edge you can develop which will help you profit long term. Don’t rely on luck, but instead focus on timing, insight, and managing risk.
