Goldman Sachs restricts staff prediction market trading to sports and entertainment
Goldman Sachs has banned employees from trading prediction-market contracts tied to financial markets, politics, and the bank itself, while permitting sports and entertainment bets, according to reports published July 9–10. The bank cited compliance-policy challenges and concerns about insider trading on platforms including Kalshi and Polymarket. The restrictions reflect growing Wall Street caution as regulated event-contract venues expand.
The bank ban walls off Kalshi and Polymarket from their most valuable professional user base. Goldman Sachs employees were natural volume drivers for finance and politics contracts; their exit degrades price signal precisely where platforms need liquidity to justify regulatory legitimacy. The restrictions also signal a broader Wall Street retreat: if major banks treat event contracts as unpoliceable insider-trading risks, other institutions will follow.
That compounds the municipal squeeze already underway in Chicago, where city staff face parallel criminal liability. For Kalshi and Polymarket, the loss means election and macro contracts lose their deepest-pocketed, most informed participants. Platforms must now rebuild trust with compliance officers or watch professional flow migrate to state-licensed sportsbooks and offshore venues. The sports-only carve-out intensifies competition with DraftKings and FanDuel at the moment a Senate bill threatens to strip sports contracts from CFTC-registered platforms entirely.