On Thursday, a Kalshi trader turned a $2,683 trade into a $105,236 win. The trader, LanceUpper, bought over 105,000 contracts on Senate Susan Collins voting against Donald Trump’s FBI Director nominee, Kash Patel. Each contract was only two cents each when he bought them on Feb. 13, the week before Patel’s confirmation vote.
🫡 Thanks to the @Kalshi guys for the payday! https://t.co/scpTn6YbXY pic.twitter.com/tk6adH8enG
— LanceUpper (@LanceupperPI) February 20, 2025
Odds of Collins voting ‘Yes’ to confirm Patel had been over 90% since Feb. 13. Collins had voted against Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense, but she also voted in favor of Robert Kennedy Jr. for HHS Secretary and Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence. Her willingness to vote for these controversial candidates suggested that she’d be willing do the same for one more.
At 11:17 am ET, a statement from Collins began circulating on X announcing that she would vote against Patel’s confirmation. During the vote’s live stream, Collins was not listed as a “yea” vote to end cloture and advance Patel’s nomination to a full Senate vote. Kalshi traders acted immediately. Collin’s odds plummeted from 85% to 5% in one minute.
Collins is a case study in probability
Collins’ vote showed how prediction markets can deliver big wins for traders who are willing to go against the crowd. Her vote also shows how small amounts of uncertainty can still rile prediction markets.
Even if markets are generally efficient — if an event has a six percent chance of occurring, then, over a large sample, it will likely occur six times out of 100. That’s unlikely if the event only happens once. However, across many events, at least a few single-digit probabilities will happen.
The rare events in one market can affect others, too. Swing senators Lisa Murkowski’s and Mitch McConnell’s odds of confirming Patel dropped at the same time as Collins’ statement.
Murkowski fell from 85% to 40% while McConnell dropped from 30% to 15%. These senators have been the dissenting votes throughout the confirmation process of Trump’s nominees. The confirmation vote itself still has to be held and neither senator has released a statement announcing their positions ahead of time like Collins.
The odds of the number of senators who’d confirm Patel also changed. Kalshi traders forecasted 51 senators confirming Patel instead of 52. The odds of 51 senators rose from 17% to 75% before settling around 53%.
These large price movements offer opportunities for traders who want to profit without holding a contract all the way to settlement. They also show how quickly prediction markets react to new public information.
