S&P Dow Jones Indices licenses Kalshi for index event contracts, with official index values to be the settlement reference

S&P Dow Jones Indices (S&P DJI) and Kalshi announced a “strategic collaboration” on 26 October. The deal runs in two directions. Kalshi will be licensed to list event contracts on S&P DJI indices, and future contracts will settle against official index values. S&P DJI will build indices from Kalshi’s own market data. The announcement does not mark the start of S&P 500 trading on Kalshi, which has listed S&P 500 contracts since 2022 under rules that do not name S&P DJI as the settlement source.

What was announced

The release was issued through PR Newswire. S&P Global’s investor-relations copy timestamps it at 9:13am ET (13:13 GMT). It makes three points:

• Licensing. “Kalshi becomes a preferred prediction market platform licensed for event contracts tied to S&P DJI indices.”
• Settlement. “Forthcoming Kalshi event contracts will settle against official index values published by S&P DJI.”
• Indices from Kalshi data. “S&P DJI becomes a preferred provider for constructing indices from Kalshi event contract data.” The companies say this could “open the door for indices, such as indices on economics, politics, and sports, built from the underlying markets on Kalshi”.

Tarek Mansour, Kalshi’s co-founder and chief executive, said: “Kalshi’s aspiration is to be the next great financial exchange. S&P DJI is the gold standard for benchmarks. Bringing that standard to Kalshi is an important step toward accelerating retail and institutional demand.”

Cathy Clay, chief executive of S&P DJI, said the collaboration “extends S&P DJI’s role as the world’s leading benchmark provider into one of the fastest-growing categories in financial markets”, adding: “Robust indices help to define markets: what they are, how to measure them and rules for monitoring their evolution.”

The release gives no financial terms, does not define “preferred”, says nothing about exclusivity, and names no new contracts or launch dates. A post on Kalshi’s site dated 27 October calls it a “multi-year partnership” and says it “enables us to list contracts on the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and other S&P DJI indices that settle directly to official S&P DJI data”. It floats possible indices on subjects including political power, supply-chain risk and weather, but gives no timetable.

The release also carries a disclaimer: “Kalshi’s contracts based on the S&P 500 and other S&P Indices are not sponsored, sold or endorsed by S&P DJI, and S&P DJI makes no representation regarding the advisability of trading in such contracts.”

How Kalshi’s S&P 500 contracts settle today

Kalshi self-certified its first S&P 500 contract, “Will $INX close <above/below/between> on ?”, with the CFTC on 26 April 2022 under Regulation 40.2(a). That filing named Quandl Data as the Source Agency and stated that Kalshi “is not affiliated with Standard & Poor’s” and that the contracts are “not sponsored, endorsed, sold or promoted by Standard & Poor’s”.

A November 2024 amendment, self-certified under Regulation 40.6, added intraday times and made Kalshi itself the Source Agency. The current contract terms still read: “The Source Agency is Kalshi.”

Three live series use those terms: daily ranges (KXINX), hourly above/below contracts (KXINXU) and annual ranges (KXINXY). Kalshi’s Trade API lists their settlement source as “For example, Google Finance”. A market in the 27 October event resolves Yes “if the end-of-day S&P 500 index value on October 27, 2026 is above 7949.9999”. Neither the terms nor the API names S&P DJI.

The Dow filings

Kalshi’s Dow filings are more explicit about the source. On 2 October it self-certified a “Will the Dow Jones Industrial Average close above 51,000 ?” contract under Regulation 40.2(a), and a class of related contracts under 40.2(d). The terms name the Source Agencies “in hierarchical order”: S&P Dow Jones Indices, “including the official closing values of the Dow Jones Industrial Average published on its official website”, followed by Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, TradingView, Pyth, Yahoo Finance and CNBC.

On 26 October, the day of the announcement, Kalshi filed an amendment under Regulation 40.6. It adds contracts that settle on the Dow’s value “at a specified time of day” and renames the product “Will the Dow Jones Industrial Average be <above/below/exactly/at least/at most/between> ?”. The amendment keeps the same Source Agency hierarchy, with S&P DJI first.

The amendment is self-certified; the CFTC has not acted on it. The CFTC’s filing page records it as received on 26 October with the status “10 Day Review”. Under Regulation 40.6, Kalshi may implement a self-certified rule once 10 business days have passed since the CFTC received it, unless the Commission stays it. None of the Dow filings mentions a licence.

Why it matters

S&P DJI publishes the S&P 500 and the Dow, and the release describes its official values as “the same reference standard that professional markets rely on every day”. Kalshi’s S&P 500 contracts settle under its own terms rather than against S&P DJI data. If future contracts settle to official S&P DJI values, as the release says, it becomes easier to compare them with, or hedge them against, the listed index derivatives that use the same benchmark.

The index-building half of the deal is the less defined part. S&P DJI would supply the methodology and Kalshi’s markets would supply the data. The companies have not said what these indices would track, who would license them, or whether any would underlie tradable products.

The deal comes as the CFTC proposes treating event contracts as swaps, with comments due on 18 November, and as Kalshi faces state challenges, including Utah’s lawsuit. In securities markets, the SEC has approved Cboe’s binary options on company KPIs, and FINRA rules and an SEC order are setting the terms for their clearing.

What we are watching

• Any Kalshi filing for S&P 500 contracts that names S&P DJI as the Source Agency, and whether its INX terms change.
• Whether the 26 October Dow amendment takes effect at the end of the 10-business-day review or is stayed.
• What “preferred” means in practice, and whether other prediction markets obtain similar licences.
• The first indices S&P DJI builds from Kalshi data, and whether any are licensed for tradable products.