Six months ago, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon called prediction markets “super interesting” and said the firm had been talking to platform leaders about potential involvement. Now Goldman has told its staff they cannot participate in those same markets.
The bank updated its internal personal trading policy in July 2026, prohibiting employees from placing contracts on prediction markets tied to finance, politics, or economics. The carve-outs are narrow: sports and entertainment betting remain permitted. Everything else, including contracts tied to specific companies, Goldman Sachs among them, is off the table. Violations are not treated as minor infractions either. Repeated offenses can result in termination.
What spooked Wall Street’s most famous bank
The policy shift did not happen in a vacuum. In May 2026, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Department of Justice brought charges against a Google employee accused of using nonpublic information to profit roughly $1.2 million on Polymarket contracts.
Goldman is not alone in rethinking its posture here. Morgan Stanley has folded prediction market guidelines into its broader code of conduct. JPMorgan and Bank of America are both reassessing their own policies.
