By The PredictWire Research Team · Last reviewed April 20, 2026

The most common question we get at PredictWire is “do prediction markets actually work?” Until today our answer relied on the same handful of academic papers everyone else cites. Today we release the data ourselves: the PredictWire Calibration Archive, an open and reproducible measurement of Polymarket’s real-world forecasting accuracy across 1,914 resolved binary markets representing $30.48 billion in lifetime trading volume.

The archive is built from 194,111 daily price snapshots pulled directly from Polymarket’s public CLOB endpoint, joined to each market’s actual resolved outcome. It is not a curated highlight reel. It is every market that closed with a clean Yes/No resolution and at least $100,000 in volume. The methodology is on the page; the underlying CSV is downloadable; every number can be recomputed from the raw data.

The Headline Finding

When prediction markets are confident, they are right. Across 1,341 contracts that closed at 80% Yes-or-higher or 20%-or-lower, the market’s directional pick was correct 97.1% of the time. That is the single number we keep coming back to. Confident calls resolve in the market’s favor almost 24 times out of 25.

The Brier score across all 1,914 closing prices is 0.0865, against a naive 50/50 baseline of 0.25 and a base-rate baseline of 0.190. The implied skill score versus base rate is +0.544 — substantial. Volume-weighted, the Brier improves to 0.0665, which tells us high-volume markets are even better-calibrated than the unweighted average.

The Reliability Picture

A handful of decile buckets from the closing-price reliability table:

Predicted	N	Mean Pred.	Actual Yes
0-10%	1,086	0.9%	1.2%
30-40%	86	34.9%	39.5%
50-60%	129	54.9%	47.3%
70-80%	56	74.4%	75.0%
90-100%	146	98.2%	99.3%

That is what calibration looks like in practice. Markets pricing 90-100% Yes resolved Yes 99.3% of the time. Markets pricing 0-10% Yes resolved No 98.8% of the time. The full ten-bucket table is on the /accuracy/ page.

What Markets Are Best At — and Worst At

Categorized, the dataset shows a clean rank-order from most-calibrated to least:

Category	N	Brier	Directional
economy	68	0.0064	100.0%
sports	226	0.0339	95.1%
politics	438	0.0419	93.2%
crypto	182	0.0568	90.7%
geopolitics	141	0.1205	82.3%
other	856	0.1305	77.8%

Economy markets are the best-calibrated class, with a Brier of 0.0064 and 100.0% directional accuracy across 68 contracts (mostly Fed decisions, where consensus converges to near-certainty). Other is the worst, at Brier 0.1305 and 77.8% directional. That is the catch-all category — niche sports lines, novelty contracts, and one-off events where the wisdom-of-crowds advantage is thinnest. Geopolitics — wars, peace deals, regime change — is the next-worst at Brier 0.12. Hard problems are hard, and the markets correctly know they’re hard.

The Counter-Intuitive Finding

The dataset reveals one finding that contradicts conventional wisdom: prediction markets are not most accurate at the moment of resolution. They are most accurate 90 to 180 days before resolution. The Brier score in the 0-1 day window is 0.10; the Brier in the 90-180 day window is 0.07. This isn’t a contradiction so much as a survivor-bias story — easy contracts effectively settle long before their nominal end date and stop contributing to the late-window snapshots, leaving only the residual hard markets. Read the late-stage Brier as “the markets that were genuinely contested to the wire.”

Why We Built This

The prediction market industry has always had a credibility problem. Every reviewer site claims their picks are “highly accurate”; nobody publishes the data. We are the first to publish ours. The full dataset, the full methodology, the full caveats — all on the /accuracy/ page. The CSV is downloadable. The metrics are reproducible. Send the worst confident calls to your friends; we did the work to find them.

PredictWire will refresh the archive quarterly. The next update — adding Kalshi resolved contracts and PredictIt’s archive — is scheduled for July 2026. We will publish a transparent diff of every metric between runs.

Read the Full Archive

• → Read the full PredictWire Calibration Archive — full reliability tables, horizon analysis, category breakdown, methodology, and CSV download.
• PredictWire Methodology — how we rate platforms.
• Best Prediction Markets — current platform rankings.

Trade These Markets

Disclosure: PredictWire earns a commission on qualifying accounts opened through the links below. Our rankings and reviews are not influenced by these relationships. Full disclosure.

• Trade on Polymarket → — every market in this archive is hosted there.
• Trade US-regulated alternatives on Kalshi →

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About this article: Written and reviewed by The PredictWire Research Team under our Editorial Standards. Platform rankings follow our public Methodology. Prediction market contracts carry risk of total loss. Nothing here is financial advice. Corrections: corrections@predictwire.io.

By The PredictWire Research Team · Last reviewed April 20, 2026

Prediction markets agree on one thing above all on April 20, 2026: the Federal Reserve is not cutting rates this month. Polymarket’s April-decision book has $122 million in combined volume and prices the “no change” outcome at 99.4%, with 50-basis-point cuts at 0.1%, 25-basis-point hikes at 0.2%, and 25-basis-point cuts at 0.4%. That is as tight a consensus as this venue produces on any monetary-policy contract, and it sets the tone for every other risk asset priced this week. Below, PredictWire’s snapshot of the markets that actually matter on a Monday morning.

Markets at a Glance

Pulled live from Polymarket on April 20, 2026. All probabilities are derived from the platform’s last trade price; volume is lifetime dollar turnover unless noted.

Contract	Yes %	Volume
No change in Fed rates after April 2026 meeting	99.4%	$23.9M
Gavin Newsom wins 2028 Democratic nomination	27.3%	$24.4M
J.D. Vance wins 2028 Republican nomination	39.2%	$12.2M
Bitcoin reaches $80,000 in April 2026	42.5%	$4.7M
San Antonio Spurs win 2026 NBA Finals	14.7%	$19.9M
US × Iran permanent peace deal by April 30, 2026	36.5%	$5.9M
US × Iran permanent peace deal by May 31, 2026	57.5%	$2.6M

Macro: The Fed Hold Is a Lock, But the Term Structure Still Tells a Story

The April meeting is priced as a no-op, but the longer end of Polymarket’s rate book is where the information is. Traders will watch the FOMC statement closely for any change in language around “data dependency” versus “restrictive stance,” because the June and September decision contracts are where the real disagreement is. With $43.7 million in volume sitting on the 50+ basis-point cut contract at 0.1%, any hawkish surprise from Chair Powell would leave almost no one offside on this meeting — but it would reprice the curve.

The broader takeaway: if you wanted confirmation that the “higher for longer” camp is still winning the rates debate, prediction markets are giving it to you unambiguously.

Politics: Newsom Pulls Ahead, Vance Consolidates the GOP Side

The 2028 presidential book on Polymarket is the most-traded political market on the platform and it has a clear story this week. Gavin Newsom’s 2028 Democratic nomination contract now sits at 27.3% with $24.4 million in lifetime volume — comfortably ahead of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at 8.2% ($12.5M) as the highest-volume challenger. On the Republican side, J.D. Vance’s nomination contract at 39.2% ($12.2M) is the plurality favorite but notably far below a lock.

What the market is telling you: the Democratic field has consolidated around a single frontrunner earlier in the cycle than 2020 or 2024 saw, while the Republican side remains meaningfully open despite Vance’s incumbent-vice-president advantage. That is a structural edge for anyone trading the GOP book, where liquidity is thinner and mispricings of second-tier candidates are more likely.

Crypto: Bitcoin’s $80,000 Target Is a Coin Flip, Downside Mostly Priced Out

Polymarket’s April Bitcoin price contracts are telling a clean story. “BTC reaches $80,000 in April” trades at 42.5% with $4.7M volume; “BTC reaches $85,000” sits at 6.3%; “BTC dips to $65,000” sits at 6.5%. Translate that into a range: traders are pricing roughly an 86% probability that Bitcoin closes April between $65K and $85K, with a heavy skew toward the upper half of that band.

The $80K level is the key one to watch in the next two weeks. If that contract breaks above 60%, it is a signal from the market that the resistance at current levels has cracked; a break below 30% means the bullish thesis for the month has failed.

Geopolitics: The Iran Peace-Deal Term Structure Prices a Slow Thaw

The single most interesting term-structure on Polymarket right now is the “US x Iran permanent peace deal” book. It has three strikes:

• By April 22, 2026: 16.5% ($17.2M volume)
• By April 30, 2026: 36.5% ($5.9M volume)
• By May 31, 2026: 57.5% ($2.6M volume)

That curve is how traders tell you “we think a deal is probably coming but not imminently.” The implied jump from 36.5% at end-April to 57.5% at end-May — a 21-point increase for one additional month — is the largest monthly move on any current Polymarket geopolitical contract. If you have a view on the pace of negotiations, this is the place to express it.

Sports: NBA Finals Favorite Remains Open, World Cup Is a Three-Way Race

NBA Finals futures on Polymarket give the San Antonio Spurs a 14.7% chance of the title at $19.9M volume — the highest-volume single futures contract of any sport on the platform. No team is above 20%, which is unusual this late in the regular season and reflects genuine market uncertainty about which conference finalist emerges. For the 2026 FIFA World Cup, France (16.1%), Spain (16.1%), and Portugal (7.8%) are the three liquid favorites; the market has yet to price anyone as a clear top choice.

Where to Trade

Disclosure: PredictWire earns a commission on qualifying accounts opened through the links below. Our rankings and reviews are not influenced by these relationships. Full disclosure.

Every market cited above is live on Polymarket right now. For readers in the United States, Kalshi offers CFTC-regulated alternatives on the economic and political contracts (Fed, elections, macro). PredictWire’s current rankings of every major platform are available on our Best Prediction Markets page.

• Trade these markets on Polymarket →
• Trade US-regulated alternatives on Kalshi →

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About this article: Written and reviewed by The PredictWire Research Team under our Editorial Standards. Platform rankings follow our public Methodology. Prediction market contracts carry risk of total loss. Nothing here is financial advice. Corrections: corrections@predictwire.io.

By The PredictWire Research Team · Last reviewed April 20, 2026

As of mid-April 2026, Polymarket continues to serve as one of the clearest real-time signals of where informed traders are putting their money. This week’s volume is concentrated in four buckets: the 2026 U.S. midterms, the Federal Reserve’s next rate decision, crypto price targets, and a set of fast-moving geopolitical contracts. Below is PredictWire’s weekly read on the contracts worth watching — and why.

All figures are directional, reflect Polymarket pricing observed during recent trading, and can shift quickly. For live numbers, always check the market directly before acting.

Midterm Control: Senate and House Contracts Heating Up

With roughly six and a half months until Election Day, Polymarket’s “Which party wins control of the Senate after 2026?” contract has emerged as one of the week’s volume leaders. Pricing has tightened meaningfully compared to the first quarter, with traders now treating the race as close to a coin flip — a shift that reflects both a handful of retirement announcements and several polling updates in key toss-up states.

The House control contract tells a different story. Traders continue to price a more decisive tilt there, though the spread has narrowed over the last two weeks as generic-ballot data moved. Watch for movement around the end-of-month fundraising disclosures, which historically produce noticeable repricing on Polymarket.

• Senate control — roughly balanced; volume surging on retirement news.
• House control — one side clearly favored, but the margin has compressed.
• Individual Senate race contracts — Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and North Carolina are this week’s highest-liquidity state-level markets.

Fed Policy: The May FOMC Meeting Is the Main Event

Polymarket’s Federal Reserve contracts are among the most efficient interest-rate markets outside the CME. Heading into the May FOMC meeting, the “No change” contract is trading as the clear favorite, consistent with current fed-funds futures pricing. The more interesting action is in the “at least one rate cut by year-end 2026” contract, which has traded in a wide range this month as CPI and labor data have pushed traders in both directions.

The contract worth watching closely: “Will the Fed cut rates before the July meeting?” Volume has picked up sharply in the last 10 days, and the market has moved toward the “No” side as recent inflation prints came in firmer than expected. A surprise downside CPI in May would likely produce one of the sharpest repricings Polymarket has seen this quarter.

Crypto Targets: Bitcoin’s Year-End Price Contracts

Crypto prediction markets remain one of Polymarket’s most active verticals. The 2026 year-end Bitcoin price ladder — contracts for whether BTC closes above $100K, $120K, $150K, and $200K — is this week’s top crypto volume driver. Traders have been incrementally reducing probability on the highest strike ($200K+) while keeping the $100K floor comfortably favored.

Ethereum contracts trail Bitcoin in liquidity but saw a notable repricing this week following updated network-activity data. The “ETH ends 2026 above $5,000” market is one to watch if you want a cleaner read on crypto sentiment than spot price alone provides.

Category	Contract Theme	Liquidity This Week
Politics	2026 Senate control	Very high
Politics	2026 House control	High
Macro	Fed rate path through year-end	High
Crypto	BTC year-end price ladder	High
Crypto	ETH year-end above $5,000	Moderate
Geopolitics	Ongoing conflict resolution contracts	Moderate–High

Geopolitics and Wildcards

Polymarket’s geopolitical contracts — covering conflict timelines, ceasefire outcomes, and leadership questions — have drawn meaningful volume this week. These markets are often the most informationally dense on the platform, because they price discrete, verifiable outcomes that are difficult to hedge anywhere else. They also tend to be the most volatile, with single news events capable of producing 10–20 point swings in minutes.

For traders who follow these contracts: pay attention to liquidity depth, not just the headline price. Geopolitical markets can look mispriced in thin books, and the apparent “edge” often disappears as soon as you try to size up.

What It All Means

The common thread across this week’s most active Polymarket contracts is that the crowd is pricing uncertainty — not conviction. Senate control near a coin flip, a Fed that’s on hold but debated, a Bitcoin ladder with wide distribution across strikes. When prediction markets cluster around 50/50 on the headline questions, it typically reflects a genuine information vacuum rather than trader indecision. That’s useful information in itself, and often a better read on “what’s actually uncertain” than any single poll, model, or pundit.

Where to Trade These Markets

If you want exposure to any of the contracts above, the two platforms PredictWire recommends are:

• Polymarket — the deepest liquidity for crypto, politics, and geopolitical contracts discussed in this update. Fully on-chain, with larger position sizes generally available than on U.S. venues.
• Kalshi — the CFTC-regulated U.S. venue. Useful for traders who want a fully compliant path into similar event markets, particularly macro and Fed-related contracts.

For our complete, regularly updated comparison of the top prediction market platforms, see the PredictWire Rankings.

Prediction market contracts involve real financial risk. Odds move continuously; always verify live pricing on the venue before trading. Nothing in this article is financial advice.

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About this article: Written and reviewed by The PredictWire Research Team under our Editorial Standards. Platform rankings follow our public Methodology. Prediction market contracts carry risk of total loss. Nothing here is financial advice. Corrections: corrections@predictwire.io.

By The PredictWire Research Team · Last reviewed April 20, 2026

Welcome to the PredictWire Kalshi Weekly Odds Roundup for the week of April 19, 2026. Kalshi – the CFTC-regulated US prediction market – remains one of the most active venues in the country for probability-based forecasting, and this week the story is about macro repricing, tightening political markets, and a fresh wave of volume in economic-indicator contracts. Below we break down where traders are placing their money, which categories are seeing the most conviction, and which markets deserve a closer look before the next news cycle hits.

Percentage ranges cited below reflect typical recent trading bands rather than a single frozen moment. Markets move minute by minute – treat these as orientation, then check live Kalshi odds before you trade.

Macro & Fed Rate Contracts: The Heaviest Volume on the Board

Federal Reserve decision contracts continue to dominate Kalshi’s macro category by both volume and open interest. Traders have been oscillating around the question of whether the next FOMC meeting produces a cut, a hold, or – in the most pessimistic corner of the book – a hike. Going into this week:

• “Fed cuts rates at the next meeting” contracts have been trading in the 35%–50% range, repricing sharply after each CPI and PCE release.
• “Fed holds rates steady” has become the favored outcome for the nearest meeting, typically printing 50%–62%.
• “Fed hikes rates” remains a tail-risk contract, rarely breaking above 8% but ticking up briefly on hotter-than-expected inflation prints.

The more interesting story is further out on the curve. Markets pricing a full 50 basis points of cuts by year-end 2026 have been hovering near 40%, a notable tightening from earlier in the spring. For hedgers, these contracts have become a cleaner way to express a rate view than some fixed-income alternatives – an argument we unpack in our guide to the best prediction markets.

Political Markets: 2026 Midterms Come Into Focus

With the 2026 midterms about six months out, Kalshi’s political book is thickening. Senate-control contracts have been the steady headliners, while House and gubernatorial markets draw more event-driven flow.

Market	Recent Trading Range	Direction of Travel
Republicans hold Senate majority	52%–58%	Slowly rising
Democrats flip the House	40%–46%	Flat to slightly up
Any party wins both chambers	55%–65%	Stable
2028 presidential nominee (either party) announced before December 2026	18%–25%	Slowly rising

State-level gubernatorial markets have wider bid-ask spreads and thinner liquidity, but they have become a favorite of event-driven traders looking for mispricings around polling releases and candidate announcements.

Economic Indicators: The Reliable Weekly Grind

Kalshi’s economic-indicator contracts – CPI beats and misses, nonfarm payrolls thresholds, unemployment-rate outcomes, jobless-claims ranges – remain the most consistent source of weekly volume on the platform. These contracts reprice rapidly around release windows and offer some of the cleanest expressions of a short-horizon macro view available to retail traders.

Ranges to watch this week:

• “CPI above 3% YoY” contracts have traded in the 55%–68% band, pulling back after the most recent release.
• “Unemployment above 4.2%” for the next monthly print has been in the 35%–45% range.
• “Nonfarm payrolls above 150k” has hovered near 60%, with sharp moves around the release.

If you are new to reading these numbers, think of a 60% contract as an implied market consensus of roughly three-to-two odds in favor of the outcome – not a guarantee.

Crypto, Commodities, and the Growing Long Tail

Bitcoin end-of-month price-threshold contracts have continued to attract volatility-seeking traders. Contracts pegged to “BTC above a key round number” have swung between 30% and 70% depending on the week’s price action. Ethereum-specific markets have smaller order books but similar volatility profiles.

On the commodity side, weather-tied contracts – recently expanded on Kalshi – have seen steady retail flow, particularly around temperature thresholds for major US cities and hurricane-season landfall questions. These markets are niche but fascinating to watch: they price real-world risk in a way that traditional finance rarely does.

Where to Trade and How to Size Up

Kalshi is currently the only fully CFTC-regulated prediction market for US retail traders, which makes it the default choice for anyone looking to trade political, economic, or event-based contracts from within the United States. For crypto-denominated markets or categories Kalshi does not list, many traders pair it with Polymarket, the largest global decentralized prediction market.

A few practical reminders before you place a trade this week:

• Kalshi odds reflect a probability distribution shaped by the crowd, not a certainty – a 65% market still loses roughly one in three times.
• Fees, spread, and capital lockup all matter; our ranking of the best prediction markets breaks these down platform by platform.
• Only risk capital you can afford to lose. Prediction markets are a form of speculation and losses are common.

We will be back next week with another roundup. Until then, keep an eye on the Fed calendar, the midterm polling releases, and the macro data tape – those three threads will drive most of what moves on Kalshi in the days ahead.

– PredictWire

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Related on PredictWire

• 2026 prediction market rankings
• Kalshi vs Polymarket compared
• Best for elections
• Best for sports
• How to use prediction markets
• Full Kalshi review
• Full Polymarket review

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About this article: Written and reviewed by The PredictWire Research Team under our Editorial Standards. Platform rankings follow our public Methodology. Prediction market contracts carry risk of total loss. Nothing here is financial advice. Corrections: corrections@predictwire.io.

By The PredictWire Research Team · Last reviewed April 20, 2026

Three years after a federal court forced the CFTC to let it list regulated event contracts, Kalshi has quietly become what its founders always claimed it would be: the dominant US-legal prediction market exchange. 2026 has been the year that claim finally matched the data.

Daily notional volume on Kalshi’s flagship markets (FOMC rate decisions, Senate control, Super Bowl) now regularly exceeds $10 million. A year ago those same markets saw a fraction of that. The platform has added more than 400 new active contracts in the last twelve months, launched full sports coverage after a protracted regulatory review, and started reporting to tax authorities with the same rigor as a traditional commodities broker.

For a review of the current platform (fees, markets, bonus codes, and how it compares to Polymarket), see our full Kalshi review. This piece is about how it got here and where it is headed.

From regulatory experiment to scale

Kalshi’s 2023 court win against the CFTC was narrow but decisive. The commission had argued that Kalshi’s political event contracts were effectively gambling and outside the scope of the Commodity Exchange Act. The court disagreed, ruling that binary event contracts tied to defined outcomes fit comfortably within the CFTC’s existing framework for Designated Contract Markets.

The ruling did not just permit Kalshi to list election contracts. It clarified that the CFTC had authority to oversee prediction markets as a category, which accelerated everything that followed: sports-outcome contracts in 2024, economic-indicator contracts throughout 2025, and the current expansion into weather and climate derivatives.

For users, the practical consequence is simple: every contract on Kalshi has now passed regulatory review, user funds sit in segregated accounts at insured banks, and the platform files 1099s like any other US financial institution. The friction that used to define prediction markets in the US (legal ambiguity, offshore operators, crypto-only settlement) has been largely removed.

What is driving the volume surge

Three categories have accounted for most of Kalshi’s 2026 growth.

Fed markets. FOMC rate-decision contracts have become Kalshi’s single most-traded category. The platform routinely shows tighter bid-ask spreads than Fed funds futures for the next two meetings, and research desks at several banks now cite Kalshi probabilities alongside CME FedWatch.

The 2026 midterms. Senate and House control contracts, plus individual race markets for the most competitive Senate seats, have drawn both retail and institutional flow. Kalshi has cleared settlement on dozens of primary races already this cycle and is on track to do the same for the general election in November.

Sports. After years of regulatory resistance, Kalshi launched comprehensive sports contracts in late 2024. The 2025 NFL season drove daily volumes that rival major sportsbooks on marquee matchups, and the platform has since expanded into NBA, MLB, UFC, and international soccer.

The competitive landscape

Kalshi’s main competitor remains Polymarket, which still leads on market breadth and total cumulative volume. The key differentiation is geographic: Polymarket is not legally available to US residents, leaving Kalshi with a de facto monopoly on the US market for regulated prediction markets. Our Kalshi vs Polymarket comparison covers the full trade-off, but the short version in 2026 is that US traders use Kalshi and international traders use Polymarket.

PredictIt, once the default US political prediction market, has been effectively lapped. Its $850 position cap and 10% profit fee are hard to defend in an environment where Kalshi offers uncapped positions at under 2% effective fees with full CFTC protection. PredictIt remains useful for researchers because of its long historical dataset, but its role as a retail trading venue is shrinking.

Platform milestones in the past year

• April 2025: Full NFL, NBA, and MLB contracts go live after CFTC clearance.
• July 2025: Kalshi launches a public API for programmatic trading, attracting quant and institutional flow.
• September 2025: Average daily volume crosses $5 million for the first time.
• January 2026: Expansion into weather and climate event contracts, including hurricane landfall and monthly temperature markets.
• March 2026: Introduction of multi-leg contracts for policy outcomes, allowing traders to bet on combined rate-decision-plus-statement scenarios.

Where Kalshi goes next

The most-watched frontier is cross-asset hedging. A growing number of traders are using Kalshi to offset specific real-world risks: farmers hedging weather outcomes, small businesses hedging Fed rate paths, forecasters monetizing long-term views. The CFTC has indicated in public comments that it views this use case favorably, which suggests more bespoke contract categories in 2027.

The second frontier is institutional adoption. Kalshi has confirmed it is working with at least two hedge funds on prime-broker-style access, with trade reporting that integrates with existing futures infrastructure. If that comes online, Kalshi will start to look less like a retail novelty and more like a legitimate derivatives exchange alongside CME and ICE.

The main risk remains political. A change in CFTC leadership or a Congressional move to restrict event contracts would hit Kalshi hardest, given its fully regulated status. So far, bipartisan interest in consumer protection has kept prediction markets out of the crosshairs. That is unlikely to change in an election year, but traders should continue to watch the policy environment.

For a current platform overview with fees, bonus codes, and side-by-side comparisons against every other major prediction market, read our full Kalshi review, or browse the complete prediction market rankings.

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About this article: Written and reviewed by The PredictWire Research Team under our Editorial Standards. Platform rankings follow our public Methodology. Prediction market contracts carry risk of total loss. Nothing here is financial advice. Corrections: corrections@predictwire.io.