#613
Trading on Feelings
Published:
Oct 18, 2025
Author:
Sarah Parsons Wolter
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Wall Street is betting on bets. The New York Stock Exchange’s parent, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), is investing $2b in Polymarket, the crypto-powered platform where traders wager on everything from election outcomes to the price of oil. The deal values the company at roughly $8b, signaling that prediction markets may quickly be becoming the financial mainstream.
For ICE, the appeal isn’t retail speculation, but rather data. Polymarket’s feeds offer a real-time pulse on market psychology, turning crowd conviction into a tradable signal. The exchange operator plans to distribute Polymarket’s data globally, a move that could blur the line between trading floors and betting forums. Still, there is hesitancy in the market. NYSE President Lynn Martin called these platforms “the next evolution” of market structure but warned that “more sanity” is needed to avoid a rerun of the SPAC and meme-stock excesses. Whether prediction contracts should be regulated like securities remains an open question.
Today, Polymarket’s users are already voting with capital on geopolitics, policy, and even pop culture (e.g. the chart performance of Taylor Swift songs). For ICE, that behavior creates data, and if markets are meant to aggregate information, prediction platforms may prove to be a solid measure of conviction that turns sentiment into an asset class.
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