The bets just keep on coming.
Prediction markets continue to surge in popularity. On Kalshi and Polymarket, the two most popular prediction markets in America (and America’s news-cycle), total trading volume surpassed $24 billion in April 2026, up from about $1.8 billion a year prior, according to analysis from The Block.
The most successful predictors, so-called sharps, are finding edges in unexpected markets, from music charts to Super Bowl broadcasts to Great Plain tornadoes. Meet three of them.
‘It’s a mix of data and vibes’
Joel Holsinger, a 26-year-old Brooklynite, began trading on prediction markets and creating content around them in July 2024. As of September 2026, he decided he was doing well enough to quit his day job in accounting; since then, he’s made around $250,000.
His specialty is mention markets, which take predictions on specific words or phrases that might be used during live events.
During this year’s Super Bowl, for example, while the rest of the world was wagering on the outcome of the Seattle Seahawks-New England Patriots bout, Holsinger had the volume dialed up on commentators Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth. He’d studied up on the duo’s previous broadcasts, and, all evening long, was stalking social media and the game script to see which players, celebrities and football lore the talking heads were likely to bring up.
His largest position on the evening, that the announcers would not say “What a catch,” hit. By night’s end, he’d profited about $8,800 on his predictions.
Holsinger is using his winnings to fund his wedding in August and a honeymoon to Europe.
“It’s been pretty life changing,” he said. “I made last year’s salary in my last few months trading.”
“It doesn’t seem real to me”
Brandon, 26 and a sixth-grade teacher from Pennsylvania, has made over $175,000 dollars on Kalshi by betting on how high songs by pop stars like Ariana Grande will climb on the charts.
“[This] is what I’ve been doing all my life for fun,” Brandon, who asked not share his last name for privacy reasons, told The Post.
It didn’t occur to him to profit off of his Grande intuition until, in early 2024, he accurately predicted the hits and sales for her “Eternal Sunshine” album on X. He nailed how many copies the record would sell within 1%, and a follower promptly sent him a direct message asking if he’d heard of Kalshi. Did he know he could make real money off these predictions?
“I said, ‘No f—ing way,’” Brandon recalled.
His expertise comes from years of genuine fandom and chart-watching. Since middle school, Brandon has been staying up until midnight on Thursdays, when new music releases.
He also studies music tracking sites like LivePopBars and KWORB. While sales figures on iTunes and some other streaming platforms are no longer publicly available, he’s built up enough of a mental model over the years to reverse-engineer data and estimate where songs will rank by week’s end.
“I know when Ariana drops a song on iTunes and it hits number one, [on average], she’s selling 20% more [copies] than the number two song,” he said. “I just know.”
At first, Brandon was wagering $20 to $500 dollars on musicians like Grande, Drake, Travis Scott and Bruno Mars. Now, his bets can climb as high as $35,000.
With his winnings, he’s paid off his student loans and car loan and enrolled in classes towards his master’s in teaching. He’s also bought a number of gifts for his family — a signed John Cena poster and Eagles tickets for his brothers, a puzzle table for grandpa, a $600 gift certificate to the hair salon for grandma and tickets to “Stranger Things” on Broadway for the whole clan.
“It doesn’t seem real to me,” he said.
Most importantly, he’s had the money to maintain his teacher’s license.
“[If I lost that] it would have absolutely broken my heart,” Brandon said.
“You have to manage your risk”
A weather scientist who studied meteorology at the College of DuPage in Illinois, Paul Sieczka has been chasing tornadoes since 2013 and predicting them on Kalshi since 2022.
He’s made about $45,000 to date, a large chunk of which went towards purchasing a new Mazda3 — so he could chase down more tornadoes.
“I paid it off in like six months,” the 32-year-old from Chicago told The Post. “[Without the winnings], it would have taken me three years.”
To inform his bets, Sieczka uses publicly available sources like PivotalWeather.com and Weather.cod.edu, which is operated by his alma mater’s meteorology program.
Sieczka found his edge by checking these models against forecasts and expected temperatures, and by measuring how they changed over time. The cumulative picture that paints is much more detailed than what’s available on Weather.com or Accuweather, which Sieczka thinks most of his competition relies on.
Experiential knowledge plays a role, too, having driven through multiple storm seasons from beginning to end, from Chicago to Wyoming to Oklahoma and back again.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Sieczka said. “A lot of driving, a lot of empty fields, and you have to manage your risk … [but it’s all worth it for] the adrenaline, the success.”
