By Andrew Welsch

Interactive Brokers is offering expanded trading hours for forecast contracts, an increasingly popular way for investors to bet on the outcome of events.

The brokerage firm said Tuesday that eligible customers can now trade forecast contracts, which allow investors to make predictions on future economic and climate events, nearly 24 hours a day, Sunday through Friday. Previously, customers could trade contracts from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Monday through Friday and 5:15 p.m. to 1 a.m. Eastern Sunday through Thursday.

The contracts are yes/no questions, and focus on a single economic, political, or environmental event. The contract's terms range from weekly to yearly. Interactive Brokers' website offers an example: Will the year-over-year change in the U.S. Consumer Price Index exceed 3.8% this month? In the example, a yes contract trades at 52 cents and a no trades at 49 cents. If you buy 20 yes contracts and are correct, your profit is $9.60.

Interactive Brokers doesn't charge commissions on forecast contract trades. It charges 10 cents on event contracts from derivatives marketplace CME, which are tied to trading in public futures markets.

The company says forecast contracts can enable investors to better manage risk and express market views. "Today's markets react instantly to events happening across geographies and time zones," says Steve Sanders, executive vice president of marketing and product development at Interactive Brokers. "By extending trading hours for forecast contracts, we're offering clients the flexibility to act on critical market developments as they unfold, regardless of when they happen."

The contracts are available on multiple Interactive Brokers platforms, including mobile and desktop. They are priced between two cents and 99 cents on the market's assessment of each event's probability, according to the company. The more likely an outcome, the higher the price. Correct predictions settle at $1 and incorrect ones settle at zero. The contracts themselves are offered by ForecastEx, a Commodity Futures Trading Commission-regulated subsidiary of Interactive Brokers.

Prediction markets gained in popularity last year as millions of investors used them to essentially place bets on the outcome of the presidential election. Interactive Brokers and rival brokerage Robinhood sold millions of such contracts. Both firms have been expanding their offering.

In March, Robinhood launched a new prediction markets hub to offer customers more options for trading event contracts, including for sporting matches. Customers traded more than one billion event contracts over the preview six months, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said at the company's April 30 earnings call. The company earns about a penny per contract.

Although Interactive Brokers' ForecastEx unit can host sports contracts on behalf of other institutional customers, the company hasn't made a decision whether it will offer sports contracts directly to its retail customers, CEO Milan Galik said during the company's recent earnings call.

ForecastEx got approval to operate a prediction market in June 2024. Two months later, Interactive Brokers made forecast contracts available for eligible U.S. and Hong Kong customers to trade. Contracts based on the U.S. presidential election were a hit with customers last year. More than $560 million in presidential election contracts were traded from Oct. 4, 2024 through Nov. 6, 2024.

Interactive Brokers expanded its forecast contracts to Canadian customers in April.

The company's expanded trading hours for forecast contracts comes as more brokerage firms move to offer customers overnight trading for stocks and exchange-traded funds.

Write to Andrew Welsch at andrew.welsch@barrons.com

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May 07, 2025 14:28 ET (18:28 GMT)

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