With its bid to let Americans wager on elections put on ice by federal watchdogs, Kalshi Inc. is now shopping a plan to let hedge funds easily wager millions of dollars on more real-life events.
The upstart New York-based derivatives exchange has been quietly laying the groundwork with trading firms and desks for months. The pitch: hedge risk and bet directly on market-moving news like monetary policy, weather shifts and geopolitical outcomes without needing a cocktail of complex, and often costly financial instruments.
Kalshi has thus far marketed itself mostly to the masses, despite the Citadel Securities quant trader pedigrees of co-founders Luana Lopes Lara and Tarek Mansour. To attract proprietary trading firms and other professional traders, Kalshi is considering boosting wager limits from a current maximum of $25,000. It already increased the limit on its monthly inflation-rate contract to $7 million, and is considering raises on other economic-themed contracts, according to people familiar with the matter.
