Kalshi Is Taking Aim at Stock Exchanges. Why Not?

Kalshi Inc.’s Chief Executive Officer Tarek Mansour got my attention when he claimed last week that prediction markets could rival stock exchanges in a few years. Of course, this does not mean that people will buy and sell stocks on Kalshi, but that prediction markets will be where information is aggregated and prices set, with the New York Stock Exchange and its ilk relegated to processing orders.

To some extent this has already happened. If you read a story on the direction of stock prices, it’s probably based on futures contracts rather than aggregating buys and sells of individual stocks. Will prediction markets exert a similar influence and become the first place traders take new information? And what would that mean for markets?