Why I started gambling on the news

I'm using prediction markets to put money on Kristi Noem's fate, the job market, and Trump's state of the union speech.

I recently wrote about Kristi Noem, the embattled secretary of the Homeland Security Dept., and mentioned that betting markets put the odds of her departure by July at 35%. I thought those odds were too low, and I said so in the story.

Then it dawned on me: Why stop there? Millions of people bet on the direction of news developments on platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi, and I’m a news geek. So why don’t I open an account and start trading?

I chose Kalshi because it’s the largest prediction market open to Americans. It took only a few minutes to create an account and transfer a few bucks from my bank. The ease with which we can gamble away our money is one of the true miracles of the digital age.

I’m not doing this because I think I can make money at it. I believe in math and have no reason to think I can beat the odds. Nor do I think I have any special knowledge as a journalist that would give me an edge in predicting the news. I analyze and report on news events, but I don’t influence whether they happen or not.

The reason I want to gamble on the news is to learn how it works as a participant, not just an observer. Prediction markets are a booming business that grew out of sports betting, which the Supreme Court broadly allowed in a 2018 ruling. Kalshi won a big legal case of its own in 2024 that allowed election betting. Just as you can place proposition or “prop” bets on random developments within a sporting event, you can now gamble on all manner of arcana in politics, economics, tech, entertainment and many other fields.

Place your bets. These are the odds of Kristi Noem leaving her job as Secretary of Homeland Security, on the prediction site Kalshi.

I plan to limit all my bets to $10, so there’s never anything more than beer money at stake in any individual trade. I also want to bet on near-term things rather than far-off events such as the 2028 presidential election, because this is not like buy-and-hold investing. I’ll post all of my trades, plus the outcomes, here at The Pinpoint Press, so everybody can cheer or cry right along with me. 😄

Since I had already taken a stance on Kristi Noem, I wanted that to be my first bet. I found at least three trades: That she will be out of her current job by March 1, May 1, or July 1. I feel like March 1 is too soon, but that Trump might ease her out once the current funding impasse for DHS gets resolved and something else becomes the controversy du jour. So I bet $10 Noem will be out by May 1. The odds of that are just 24% and the bet will pay $41 if I win.

[How to survive America in 2026]

I’ve closely followed the legal case challenging Trump’s emergency tariffs, which the Supreme Court could rule on at any time. Kalshi offers a trade allowing you to guess how many of the nine justices will vote to uphold the tariffs. I guessed three (Thomas, Alito and and one of the other four conservative justices). The odds of three are 31%. My $10 bet would earn a $30 payout.

I also follow the job market closely, and noticed you can bet on the February jobs report, which is due out March 6. I guessed that job gains in February will total less than 40,000, because many economists thought the unusually large 130,000 gain in January was statistically fishy and likely to be corrected downward. Plus, Americans answering confidence surveys are practically shouting about the weakening job market. If they’re right and there’s a small gain or a loss of jobs in February, my $10 bet, at 24% odds, will pay $39.

You can also bet on whether certain words, such as “trillion,” “nuclear,” or “transgender,” will or will not be in President Trump’s state of the union speech on February 24. I bet that he will not say the words “ICE” or “National Guard,” because I’m guessing he’ll want to avoid the negative connotations. That’s a contrarian bet. The odds are 88% he will say “ICE” or “National Guard,” and just 12% that he won’t say either. My $10 bet will return $72 if I guess right.

[Who’s up and down in the K-shaped economy]

If this particular trade makes you wonder about fraud—me too. A lot of Trump insiders will know what is in his speech, or be able to persuade Trump to say or skip certain words. That’s privileged information they could convert into free money by betting on it.

The ability to game prediction markets seems to be a vulnerability. In January, an unknown trader nabbed more than $400,000 on Polymarket by betting that Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro would soon be out of office—placing the bets right before Trump ordered the operation to snatch Maduro and bring him to the United States. It’s still not clear whether that was a lucky guess or an insider trade. But it obviously could have been an inside job.

What do I hope to get from all this? For one, a sense of whether prediction markets actually capture the wisdom of crowds or are just another form of human folly. Some analysts think prediction markets are better than polls at foretelling political outcomes and other eventualities. I’m testing for myself.

I’m also wondering what gambling is doing to America. The whole country is becoming a huge casino, with the total amount of legal and illegal gambling approaching $1 trillion per year. Is this sustainable?

[The “sell America” trade is looking pretty good]

Plus, gambling on the news might be fun. I’ll be watching Trump’s state of the union speech no matter what, and I expect it to be a tedious chore. But I’ll be listening closely for the words “ICE” and “National Guard,” which could generate a bit of excitement if it starts to look like I’m in the money. If the words go unsaid, I might even make it to the end of Trump’s speech.