ARK Invest to use Kalshi prediction data for research

ARK Invest and Kalshi announced a partnership to incorporate prediction market data into ARK’s research and risk management. The integration brings real-time probability signals from Kalshi markets into ARK’s datasets, including contracts tied to the U.S. deficit-to-GDP ratio and business key performance indicators. ARK plans to use the data to monitor expectations that inform investment views and hedging.

The effort centers on three applications:

• market-based research signals that supplement fundamental and quantitative work;

• forward-looking gauges of business outcomes via markets linked to production volumes, deliveries, regulatory decisions, and technology milestones;

• event-specific risk management around company developments, sector shifts, and macroeconomic releases.

Under the plan, ARK will request and track markets aligned with its coverage and portfolio exposures, then evaluate how market-implied probabilities influence research and portfolio planning. The firm is also studying markets connected to trading activity, regulatory approvals, and technology progress.

Kalshi already lists several relevant markets, including nonfarm productivity, nonfarm payrolls, and the deficit-to-GDP ratio. ARK intends to analyze how these prices adjust to new information in real time.

Both firms outlined a process for identifying and launching markets that address investor demand for standardized probability signals. The collaboration comes as institutions test market-implied data for forecasting and risk control.

In the announcement, ARK founder and CEO Cathie Wood called the use of prediction markets in institutional workflows “a natural next step for innovation in financial research,” noting that such signals can add context around key drivers across disruptive sectors.

Research director Nick Grous described prediction markets as “some of the purest expressions of risk around key economic and company-specific outcomes” and pointed to the partnership as a way to extend these signals to more investors. Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour cited growing demand for a formal market request pipeline, calling it “a huge part of the original vision for Kalshi: pricing everything so that the world’s most important institutions could make better decisions.”

A Federal Reserve paper published last month described Kalshi’s macro markets as a “high-frequency, continuously updated, distributionally rich benchmark” for tracking expectations, comparing them with surveys and other indicators. Academic studies of 2024 U.S. election markets have examined trading around the Biden–Trump debate, the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, and President Biden’s withdrawal from the race.