S&P Dow Jones Indices Announce Kalshi Partnership Platforming Benchmarkets on Exchange

S&P Dow Jones Indices has announced a new licensing deal and market collaboration with Kalshi that will bring event contracts based on the former company's benchmarks to the latter's designated contract market.

The result will be an expansion of Kalshi's financial markets for traders interested in prediction markets for diversification or hedging.

The collaboration will also let Kalshi's event contracts be used to construct indices across a broad range of markets. Economics, politics, and sports events could be the first markets converted to indices this way.

S&P DJI says benchmarks will help prediction markets "mature"

An Oct. 27 press release from S&P Dow Jones Indices (S&P DJI) states that the new partnership makes Kalshi its "preferred prediction market platform" and gives Kalshi a license for event contracts tied to S&P DJI indices. In return, S&P DJI is "a preferred provider for constructing indices from Kalshi event contract data."

As a result, "forthcoming Kalshi event contracts will settle against official index values published by S&P DJI." Benchmark indices are portfolios of securities that represent a specific market or a sector of a market.

Indices serve as benchmarks because they provide standards against which investment portfolios are measured. Thus, event contracts on Kalshi tied to S&P DJI will resolve based on to what extent the specified portfolio compares with the benchmark index.

Partnering with S&P DJI not only leverages its expertise in establishing those indices but also signals a widely accepted standard for those benchmarks. Kalshi's markets will be new territory for that index construction.

Kalshi markets set to become indexed through S&P DJI's channels

The release continues to explain that "the collaboration will also bring together Kalshi's market data and S&P DJI's expertise to open the door for indices, such as indices on economics, politics, and sports, built from the underlying markets on Kalshi." S&P DJI believes those new indices will give "market participants a new way to observe and assess signals stemming from prediction markets."

Indexing Kalshi's markets will provide a longer-term way to assess user sentiment on events. The indexing process will catalog market-price fluctuations and convert them into benchmarks that people interested in similar future events can reference.

Converting Kalshi markets into benchmark indices isn't the only new way users can interact with contracts on the exchange.

Kalshi introduces elections combos ahead of midterms

Kalshi has allowed sports combos and multi-category combos, but traders can now combine multiple contracts in Kalshi's elections category. The new offering is available with United States Congressional elections along with races for multiple state governorships scheduled for Nov. 3.

Elections trading has spiked sharply across ForecastEx, Gemini, Kalshi, and Polymarket ahead of the elections for control of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate.

Surges have been most pronounced in the race for one of Texas' two Senate seats and markets on which party will control the House in the next Congress.

This data could feed benchmarks that traders interested in future elections reference. Combos on Kalshi will be part of the data establishing those indices.