Influencer brokerage Robinhood enters the US presidential election gambling market, allowing users to bet on contracts for Harris or Trump

With about eight days left until the US presidential election, the emerging US brokerage firm Robinhood is racing against time to announce that their users can now start betting on the outcome of the 2024 US presidential election. Starting from Monday, October 28th, Eastern Time, as long as users meet certain conditions, such as being US citizens, they can buy and sell contracts related to Harris or Trump on Robinhood. This new service is provided through a collaboration between Robinhood's derivatives department and ForecastEx. Public information shows that ForecastEx is a prediction platform under Interactive Brokers. Recently, this type of political betting has become very popular, as another platform, Kalshi, won a lawsuit against the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), allowing users to continue betting on political election results. Previously, the CFTC wanted to prevent such trading of political election results. Now the CFTC is appealing. Shortly after that, Interactive Brokers also launched various political contracts, including this year's US election. This year, the market for betting on election results has sparked some controversy. Some are concerned that due to the low number of participants, the results of these markets may be manipulated. For example, the international platform Polymarket said last week that a French user spent millions buying bets on Trump winning through four accounts. However, after investigating, Polymarket stated that this transaction did not manipulate the market. In a statement, Robinhood said, "We believe that this kind of betting on election results, which allows people to participate in decision-making in real time, is a new investment method that enables ordinary people to participate in ongoing major events." Currently, their platform only allows betting on the outcome of the presidential election. It is worth noting that this platform for betting on election results is different from traditional political polls, as they do not use traditional polling methods and therefore cannot replace political polls