$200K Annual Salary Hiring, Predicting Market Will See Wall Street Players

Original Article Title: "$200K Salary to Hire, Wall Street Enters Prediction Market"

Original Article Author: Niu Sike, Deep Tide TechFlow

At last, the prediction market, once dominated by political fans, speculators, and rug pullers, is seeing a group of silent yet deadly new players.

According to the Financial Times, several well-known trading firms, including DRW, Susquehanna, and Tyr Capital, are building dedicated prediction market trading teams.

Last week, DRW posted a job ad offering a base salary of up to $200,000 for traders who can "monitor and trade active markets in real time" on platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi.

Options trading giant Susquehanna is hiring prediction market traders who can "determine incorrect fair value," identify "unusual behavior" and "inefficiencies" in the prediction market, and is also building a dedicated sports trading team.

Crypto hedge fund Tyr Capital continues to recruit prediction market traders who "are already running complex strategies."

The data supports this expansion ambition.

Monthly trading volume surged from less than $100 million in early 2024 to over $8 billion in December 2025, with a record daily trading volume of $701.7 million on January 12.

When the pool of funds is deep enough to accommodate giants, Wall Street's entry becomes inevitable.

Arbitrage First

In the prediction market, institutions and retail players are not playing the same game at all.

Retail players often rely on various fragmented information to predict individual events, essentially a form of gambling, while institutional players focus on cross-platform arbitrage and market structural opportunities.

In October 2025, hedge fund Saba Capital Management founder Boaz Weinstein said at a closed-door meeting that the prediction market allows portfolio managers to hedge investments with higher precision, especially regarding the probability of specific events.

Standing next to Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan at the time, he said, "A few months ago, Polymarket showed a 50% probability of an economic recession, while the credit market indicated a risk of about 2%. You can think of countless pairs of trades that were previously impossible."

According to Weinstein's view, a hedge fund manager can buy the contract "Economy Will Not Recede" on Polymarket because the market believes the recession probability is as high as 50%, making this contract relatively cheap.

At the same time, in the credit market, one can short some bonds or credit products that would plummet during an economic recession because the credit market only assigns a 2% probability to a recession, keeping these product prices high.

If the economy indeed recedes, a small loss would occur on Polymarket, but a significant profit could be made in the credit market as those overvalued bonds would crash.

If the economy does not recede, you make money on Polymarket, potentially incur a small loss in the credit market, but overall still come out ahead.

The emergence of prediction markets has provided the traditional financial markets with a new "price discovery tool."

The Dawn of Privilege

Further tipping the scales is the regulatory privilege.

Susquehanna is Kalshi's first market maker and has reached a competitive contract agreement with Robinhood.

Kalshi offers market makers many advantages: lower fees, special trading limits, and more convenient trading channels, with specific terms not disclosed.

The entry of market makers will quickly transform this market.

Previously, prediction markets often faced liquidity issues, especially for niche events. When you wanted to trade a large number of contracts, you might encounter significant spreads or be unable to find counterparties at all.

Professional institutions will promptly correct obvious pricing errors. For example, price disparities for the same event across different platforms or glaringly irrational probability pricing will be swiftly arbitrated.

For retail investors, this is not good news. Previously, you might have found that "Trump Wins Election" had a 60% probability on Polymarket and 55% on Kalshi, allowing for simple arbitrage opportunities that will largely disappear in the future.

With Wall Street holding the reins, with Ph.D.s earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, the future of prediction contracts may also enter a professional and diversified era, not just limited to single-event predictions, such as:

1. Multi-event combination contracts, similar to parlay bets in sports betting

2. Time series contracts, predicting the probability of an event occurring within a specific time frame

3. Conditional Probability Product, what is the probability of B happening if A has occurred

……

Looking back at financial history, from forex to futures, and now to cryptocurrency, the development of every emerging market has followed a similar trajectory: ignited by retail, eventually taken over by institutions.

The prediction market is repeating this process. Technological edge, capital scale, and privileged access will ultimately determine who survives till the end in this game of probabilities.

For retail, while there may still be a glimmer of hope in long-cycle predictions or niche areas, it must face the reality that when Wall Street's sophisticated machinery kicks into full gear, the era of easy profits through information asymmetry may be gone for good.

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