Robinhood Is Putting Yes-or-No Bets Next to Your Stocks. The Crowd’s Odds Are Worth Reading — Not Worth Your Retirement Money
Robinhood struck a deal to offer yes-or-no event contracts from OG, Crypto.com’s newly spun-out prediction market. Crowd odds can be a useful signal. A contract that pays on one outcome is still a bet — and bets don’t belong in long-term money.
By Sean Anees Saifi · Capital Wealth · Published Thursday, September 10, 2026 · Source: The Wall Street Journal, September 9, 2026 edition
Key Points
Robinhood Markets (HOOD) signed a multiyear deal to offer yes-or-no event contracts from OG, the prediction-market company Crypto.com just spun out, and will take minority stakes in both.
Citadel Securities’ July investments valued Crypto.com at $15 billion and OG at $5 billion; OG launched in February and has grown about 20-fold this year, its CEO says.
The deal follows a 2025 partnership with Kalshi and the launch of Rothera, a derivatives exchange Robinhood started with Susquehanna; terms, including the size of Robinhood’s stakes, weren’t disclosed.
Retail traders have embraced event contracts despite an unsettled regulatory picture, and stock-linked perpetual futures could follow if regulators approve.
Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek has pitched the business partly on institutions’ appetite to trade against retail order flow.
$15B
Crypto.com valuation after July stake
$5B
valuation of OG, the prediction-market arm
~20x
OG’s growth this year, per Crypto.com’s CEO
~60%
market-priced odds of a September Fed hike
Event contracts pay a fixed amount if a yes-or-no question resolves one way and nothing if it resolves the other, and brokerage apps are adding them alongside ordinary stock trading.
In one line: Crowd odds are worth reading as a signal, but a contract that pays on one outcome is a bet, and bets don’t belong in retirement money.
Football season is arriving, and so is a new way to have an opinion about it: a yes-or-no contract, bought in the same app where you might keep your stocks. Robinhood Markets (HOOD) has signed a multiyear deal to offer event contracts from OG, the prediction-market company Crypto.com just spun out on its own, and it’ll take minority stakes in both Crypto.com and OG. The terms, including what Robinhood is investing, weren’t disclosed.
It’s Robinhood’s latest step into a product retail traders love and regulators haven’t settled. It partnered with Kalshi in 2025 and launched Rothera, a derivatives exchange, with Susquehanna. OG opened for business in February and has grown about 20-fold this year, according to Crypto.com’s chief executive, Kris Marszalek, and Citadel Securities’ July investments valued Crypto.com at $15 billion and OG at $5 billion. Marszalek calls event contracts the first of several joint products; stock-linked perpetual futures could follow if regulators approve. Robinhood’s JB Mackenzie says the deal brings better pricing and more contracts just in time for the busiest betting season of the year.
The crowd is worth hearing
Crowd odds can be genuinely useful. A price on a yes-or-no question is a quick read on what people with money at stake expect, and this edition prints prediction-market odds for exactly that reason — as a gauge of the mood, never as a forecast or a trade. Right now, markets price roughly a 60% chance that the Fed raises rates at its Sept. 15–16 meeting. That’s worth knowing: it tells you what the crowd already expects, which isn’t the same as what will happen.
A bet isn’t an investment
Buying the contract is a different act. An event contract pays on one outcome and nothing on the other, so it’s a wager, not a stake in anything. There are no earnings behind it, no interest and nothing to compound; it simply expires. What one side wins, the other loses, and that’s before costs. It’s also worth asking who sits across the table. Marszalek has pitched the business partly on institutions’ appetite to trade against retail order flow. When professionals want your orders, that’s a clue about the odds.
A small wager with money set aside for fun is entertainment, and it can be budgeted that way. Retirement money has a different job. If someone in the family has started treating a betting tab like a savings account, bring the statement — fifteen minutes is enough to sort out which dollars are for Sunday and which are for later.
What It Means For Your Portfolio
Avoid — event contracts don’t belong in retirement money
Prediction-market odds can show what a crowd expects, which is useful information; buying the contract turns that information into a zero-sum bet that expires, and long-term money generally works better in assets that earn and compound.
General planning principles, not advice for anyone in particular: an event contract settles on one outcome and pays nothing on the other, which makes it a wager rather than an ownership stake. Money set aside for retirement generally belongs in assets with earnings or interest behind them. Anyone who trades contracts at all may want a small, separate entertainment budget, so a bad streak never touches the plan.
In the book, there’s no position: Robinhood isn’t held, and the book owns no event contracts. The edition reads prediction-market odds as a gauge of expectations — never as a forecast or a trade — and nothing is bought or sold before Friday’s inflation report.
