Odds on what will Trump say this week

How weekly Trump mention markets work

Trump markets have become its own political betting category. Each week, Kalshi and Polymarket list a “What will Trump say this week?” market with approximately 15-27 individual mention terms. Traders buy Yes or No contracts on each term, priced between 1¢ and 99¢, reflecting the market’s implied probability that those words will be spoken or mention at some point during the week.

A Yes contract pays $1 if Trump says the listed word or phrase during the week. A No contract pays $1 if he doesn’t. If “Biden” is trading at 85¢ Yes, the market implies an 85% probability that Trump will say “Biden” that week. You’d pay 85¢ to win $1 (profit of 15¢) if it hits, or lose your 85¢ if it doesn’t. The No side costs 15¢ and pays $1 if Biden goes unmentioned.

Contracts settle based on official transcripts and live audio. Nicknames, abbreviations, and partial matches typically don’t count unless the market rules explicitly include them. Mispronunciations are a gray area. Kalshi makes the final call on edge cases, which has occasionally caused disputes among traders.

The probability of Trump saying any given word

We tracked 17 weekly “What will Trump say markets” from late September through mid-January 2026. The series has generated $8.93 million in total volume with an average of $558,000 per week. The overall yes rate sits at 49.8%, meaning Trump says roughly half of the terms offered in any given week. But that average masks wide variation: some terms resolve yes nearly every time, while others have never hit, not once.

The pricing on these terms tends to reflect their reliability. Expect to pay 70¢–90¢ on the yes side, meaning the per-contract edge is small but consistent. The real question is whether the market is pricing them correctly relative to that specific week’s context. A quiet week with few public appearances might push “Fake News” below its 92% baseline; a week packed with press conferences and rallies might push it above.

Volume and yes-rate data sourced from DeFiRate using Kalshi’s weekly “What will Trump say this week?” markets. Analysis covers 17 weekly markets, totaling 448 individual contracts across 61 unique terms. Polymarket odds and volume are not included in this dataset. Terms offered fewer than 3 times are included but unlabeled due to small sample sizes.

How to trade what Trump says in prediction markets

“What will Trump say this week?” markets are available on both Kalshi and Polymarket.

Kalshi is open to US-based traders. Create a Kalshi account and fund it via bank transfer, wire, or debit card. Use referral code DEFI to get $10 free with your first $10 in trades. Browse the Kalshi mentions category or search for “Trump” to find the active weekly market. Contracts are priced between 1¢ and 99¢. You can buy yes or no positions and exit at any time before settlement by selling your contracts back to the market.

Polymarket also runs weekly Trump mention markets with its own term lists and resolution criteria. Polymarket is available internationally and uses USDC for trading. Note that term selection and resolution rules may differ from Kalshi, so odds on the same term can vary between platforms.

How these markets resolve

Kalshi and Polymarket both run weekly Trump mention markets, but their resolution rules differ in ways that matter for traders. Both platforms scope weekly markets to a defined date range (typically Monday through Sunday or similar).

• Kalshi resolves based on public statements, direct quotes published by source agencies, and written posts on Trump’s personal social media accounts (Truth Social). Executive Orders and bills signed do not count. Grammatical inflections like plurals and possessives are included — “immigrant” covers “immigrants” and “immigrant’s” — but other tense inflections, hyphenated compounds, and synonyms are not. For terms with slashes like “Doge/Dogecoin,” either word satisfies the contract. Markets close early if the term is said, with payout 30 minutes after closing. If the term isn’t said by the end of the week, the market closes and resolves no.

• Polymarket is narrower. Only verbal mentions count — recorded audio or video that is publicly accessible. Written posts on Truth Social or other written statements do not count toward resolution. AI-generated audio or video is also excluded, and videos posted on social media that were filmed outside the market’s time frame don’t qualify. Compound words count regardless of context (e.g., “killjoy” counts for both “kill” and “joy”).

Watch for: A Truth Social post containing a term resolves yes on Kalshi but not on Polymarket. For terms that Trump is more likely to write than speak — or vice versa — this can create a structurally different set of odds across platforms on the same term in the same week.

Trump’s schedule drives everything

Yes rates swing from 25% to 78% on a week-to-week basis. And most of that variance traces back to how often Trump speaks publicly, which is itself driven by what’s happening in the world.

The December 29 holiday week posted the dataset’s lowest yes rate at 25%. With a lighter schedule over the break, reliable terms went dark. “Fake News,” “Sleepy Joe,” and “Rigged Election” all missed for the first time since these markets opened. Even “Barack Hussein Obama,” which had hit 15 out of 17 weeks, went silent.

Then Venezuela happened. On January 3, the U.S. military captured Nicolás Maduro in an overnight strike on Caracas. The Jan 5 market, covering December 29 through January 4, became the highest-volume week in the dataset at $1.69M. “Maduro” — which had already resolved yes in 8 of 12 weeks — hit again as Trump held back-to-back press conferences from Mar-a-Lago on the operation.

The following week (Jan 5–9) pushed yes rates to their peak at 77.8%. Trump’s public schedule was packed — oil executive meetings at the White House, press gaggles, and responses to multiple breaking stories. If Trump makes more appearances, then more words are said and more terms have the probability to resolve Yes.

The pattern is consistent across the full dataset. October weeks, when Trump’s public calendar was lighter, averaged Yes rates in the low-to-mid 40s. By mid-December, with daily press gaggles and bilateral meetings, Yes rates climbed into the 60s.

For traders, this creates a simple pre-market checklist: check the public schedule, scan the news cycle, then price accordingly. A week packed with press conferences and foreign leader meetings is a structurally different bet than a quiet one.