Goldman Sachs bans its employees from participating in financial and politics-related prediction market trading.

According to Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs has banned its employees from trading in prediction markets, with the exception of sports and entertainment bets. This marks one of the clear steps Wall Street firms are taking to address new regulatory challenges stemming from the surge in event betting activity. Goldman recently updated its personal trading policy, prohibiting employees from trading event contracts linked to specific companies (including Goldman itself), as well as contracts tied to election outcomes and any financial market performance. Repeated policy violations may result in employee dismissal or account closure; in cases of improper trading, Goldman can also require staff to surrender profits exceeding $200 or donate the funds to charity. The firm’s policy explicitly bans employees from participating in event contracts related to corporate restructurings, mergers and acquisitions, ceasefire dates, Bitcoin prices, and M&A regulatory approval outcomes, among others. However, contracts such as "whether a particular team will win a championship" remain permitted. By comparison, JPMorgan Chase previously only required employees to "think carefully" before engaging in finance-related prediction markets, while hedge funds including Point72 and Balyasny have fully banned staff from using prediction markets via personal accounts.