An Index for Everything: S&P Wants to Price the Future

The scale of the incumbent is the point. By the end of 2024, more than $20 trillion was indexed or benchmarked to the S&P 500 alone. The Dow dates to 1896 and the S&P 500 to 1957. The new indices will bundle related event contracts, covering political power, supply chain risk, AI's impact on employment, sports outcomes and weather, into single indicators, the way a stock index bundles companies.

It is not the only door into finance opening. Rothera, the exchange owned 45 percent each by Robinhood and Susquehanna, has won CFTC approval for the first swap tied to a listed company's key performance indicator, starting with Tesla's earnings per share. The approval opens three families: financial reporting, covering earnings, sales, margins and expenses; platform usage, covering active users, customers, flights and trips; and production, covering units produced and delivered, rolling out gradually this autumn.

Kalshi is building from the other side, too: on October 6 it launched a perpetual future on 500 large U.S. companies, and last week it added sector KPI markets tracking corporate metrics across industries. Prediction markets began by pricing elections and games. Now they are pricing the earnings calendar, and Wall Street's own benchmark house is helping them do it.