Cantor Fitzgerald Opens Institutional Block Trading in Kalshi Event Contracts

Cantor Fitzgerald said on Aug. 19 that it has begun arranging institutional block trades in event contracts, making it one of the first full-service investment banks to broker prediction-market trades at institutional size on a CFTC-regulated exchange.

Prediction markets grew on retail flow, and their order books still show it. An institution that wants a position worth millions cannot work it through a thin central order book without pushing the price against itself.

Cantor’s answer is the block trade, a large transaction negotiated privately and executed at one price, away from the order book. The bank will act as an introducing broker, arranging execution for clients through Kalshi‘s block trading framework. Susquehanna Predictions, the prediction-markets arm of Susquehanna International Group, is supplying pricing and liquidity.

“Prediction markets are growing rapidly, but institutional participation has not kept pace because investors have lacked the ability to transact at scale on a regulated exchange,” Pascal Bandelier, Cantor’s co-CEO and global head of equities, said in the announcement. “The liquidity is here.”

Cantor will run the business inside its Global Markets division under Bandelier and fellow co-CEO Christian Wall, applying the model the firm built in equities and fixed income to a new regulated asset class. Kalshi is the first venue, and Cantor said more are expected to follow.

“We’re looking for partners who think creatively about where event contracts fit in a client’s portfolio, and who see the new use cases and hedging opportunities that come with it,” Max Crowley, Kalshi’s vice president of business development, said in the announcement.

The launch follows a build-out of institutional plumbing around prediction markets. Galaxy Digital opened an over-the-counter desk for the contracts with a $10 million trade with Arca on CLARITY Act outcomes, and Crypto.com hired a Wall Street veteran to expand its own institutional prediction-markets business.

Susquehanna, described in the release as the first quant trading firm to run a dedicated prediction markets arm, expects the next wave of demand to come from hedging rather than speculation.

“We believe the next area of material growth for prediction markets will be large institutional risk transfer,” Joe Grubb, head of business development at Susquehanna Predictions, said in the announcement. The firm can price and execute tailored contracts for counterparties looking to hedge “both general market and bespoke industry risk currently unserved by traditional insurance markets,” he said in the release.

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