Highlights

1. A stellar week for Kalshi forecasts

2. Five new contracts coming out in the next seven days

3. Upgrades to the Volume Incentive Program

A stellar week for Kalshi forecasts

Kalshi’s inflation forecasters were spot-on this month in the economics world, successfully forecasting 0.4% month-over-month inflation (6.0% year-over-year). For next month, Kalshi forecasts 0.3% headline inflation, along with 175,000 new jobs.

Meanwhile, their forecasts for the rest of the year have swung wildly in response to last week’s banking events. In particular, while Kalshi still forecasts the Fed to hike interest rates 25 bp at their March meeting, the underlying probability distribution has changed dramatically. At the start of last week, the probability of a 25 bp hike was ~80%, with an 18% chance of a 50 bp hike. After comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Powell, the probability of a 50 bp hike surged to 54%. The probability of a hike pause remained at 2%. But the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank scrambled those probabilities. Today, the probability of a 50 bp hike sits at 3%, and the probability of no hike at all sits at roughly 40%. This level of uncertainty is highly unusual just a week out from the decision.

In non-economic news, Kalshi’s forecasts were dead accurate for the Oscars. Kalshi’s markets correctly called the winner of nearly races it had markets for:

1. Best Picture (90% prior probability for Everything Everywhere All at Once )

2. Best Actress (60% prior probability for Michelle Yeoh)

3. Best Actor (52% prior probability for Brendan Fraser)

4. Best Director (90% prior probability for Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert)

5. Best Supporting Actress (both Angela Bassett and eventual winner Jamie Lee Curtis had a 39% prior probability)

6. Best Supporting Actor (98% prior probability for Ke Huy Quan)

7. Best Original Screenplay (59% prior probability for Everything Everywhere All at Once)

8. Best Adapted Screenplay (56% prior probability for Women Talking)

Five new contracts in the next seven days

March 17: Federal Reserve Nominees

With Lael Brainard leaving for the NEC, there will be a vacancy on the FOMC. As a result, Kalshi will be certifying a generalized Fed confirmation market that will allow us to spin up a market for that vacancy, as well as any vacancies that emerge in the future.

March 20: Front-month Dutch TTF natural gas

After the success of the Kalshi’s natural gas markets, we’re expanding into European natural gas markets! These markets will resolve to Yes if the price of Dutch front-month natural gas breaches a prescribed threshold by a given date.

March 21: Semiconductor PPI

This market may be of interest to those who followed the debacle that was the semiconductor chip market the last few years. This market will track the Producer Price Index for Semiconductors as a proxy for future chip price issues.

March 22: US Credit Downgrade

For those worried about the debt ceiling standoff or financial instability, Kalshi will be offering a contract that pays out if the S&P downgrades the US’s credit rating

March 23: Gonzalez v. Google

The recently heard Gonzalez v. Google case may have incredible consequences for the future of the open Internet. The case regards whether Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunizes companies for algorithmic recommendations of content. In other words, while there is broad agreement that (e.g.) Twitter cannot be sued for someone tweeting illegal content, this case regards whether they can be sued if their algorithm promotes or boosts such a tweet. Kalshi will be offering a market on the outcome of this case.

Upgrades to the Volume Incentive Program

As we’ve mentioned the last few iterations of this newsletter, on March 1, Kalshi launched a new volume incentive program, in order to bootstrap more liquidity and incentivize participants to help promote price discovery. In other words, we’re going to pay you based on your monthly volume on the platform. The tiers are as follows:

To help people participating in this program, Kalshi has launched a new incentive volume tracker, so that people can know quickly what % dollar rebate tier they are in. This feature is at the top of the portfolio page and will show what tier one is in and how close one is to the next rebate tier.

Disclosure

Kalshi’s upcoming new markets and features are not guaranteed to be live. These previews are meant to provide traders and interested observers with a sneak peek into what Kalshi is building, but they are not a promise that they will eventually be live.