Can prediction markets win over Wall Street?

Looking up for Lopes LaraPhotograph: Getty Images

Jul 23rd 2026|NEW YORK|5 min read

It was on Wall Street that Luana Lopes Lara, the 30-year-old co-founder of Kalshi, was inspired to start a prediction-markets exchange. As an intern at hedge funds such as Five Rings Capital and Citadel Securities, she was baffled to find fund managers building elaborate portfolios to take positions on forthcoming elections and interest-rate decisions. Kalshi’s users bet directly on events instead. “What we are building is a financial exchange where anyone from a Robin Hood trader to Goldman Sachs to someone in an MIT dorm could trade directly in what their thesis was about the future,” Ms Lopes Lara says.