Quantitative Trading Firms Build Dedicated Prediction Market Desks

Major quantitative trading firms are establishing dedicated desks to trade prediction market contracts on platforms including Polymarket and Kalshi. Chicago-based DRW posted a job listing seeking candidates to monitor prices in real time across both platforms, identify mispricings and execute trades before prices converge.

The listing specifies strategies such as microstructure arbitrage, cross-platform arbitrage and news-driven momentum trading at sub-second speeds. Wintermute is hiring algorithmic traders with experience in prediction markets. IMC is seeking quantitative traders comfortable operating across binary event contracts.

com have also posted related job listings.

Polymarket processed between $22 billion and $40 billion across political, economic and sports markets in 2025. As of last week, its UEFA Champions League Winner market reached $256 million in volume, the 2026 NBA Champion market reached $399 million and the 2026 NHL Stanley Cup market reached $79 million.

Crane, a statistics professor at Rutgers University, said specialized sports betting groups continue to drive market accuracy on sports outcomes. He stated that institutional traders are more likely to profit from short-term market dynamics and technical trading aspects.

An example cited in the coverage involved the May 14 market for Britain's next prime minister. Andy Burnham's contracts traded at 24 cents on Polymarket while equivalent contracts traded at 50 cents on Betfair before prices converged hours later. Prediction markets require infrastructure to move capital across currencies and settlement systems because Betfair settles in sterling while Polymarket settles in crypto.