Prediction Markets Are Booming. Alternative Data Could Give Traders an Edge

By AltIndex Research · 13 min read · August 25, 6:44 pm

Investors have long used alternative data to spot changes in a company’s performance before they appear in earnings reports or traditional financial metrics. Now, as prediction markets grow and introduce more company-specific contracts, that same data is becoming useful in an entirely new way. Will a company beat earnings? Announce layoffs? Be acquired? Reach a specific number of app downloads? Trade above a certain price by the end of the month? In this article, we explore how signals such as web traffic, hiring activity, headcount, app downloads, and social engagement can help traders make smarter predictions.

Prediction Markets Are Moving Beyond Elections and Sports

The growth has been steep. Combined monthly volume across major prediction platforms rose from less than $5 billion in September 2025 to about $24 billion in April 2026, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from The Block. Kalshi raised $1 billion at a $22 billion valuation in May and said its annualized trading volume had more than tripled from $52 billion to $178 billion in six months. Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, has made $1.6 billion in direct investments in Polymarket since October 2025, including a $600 million investment announced in March.

While sports still account for most prediction-market activity, the range of available bets is expanding quickly. Traders can now predict whether a company will beat earnings, announce layoffs, be acquired, reach a specific number of app downloads, or trade above a certain price by a set date. These focused questions create new uses for alternative data: job postings and headcount can help assess layoff risk, app-download estimates can inform usage contracts, and web traffic or social engagement can provide additional context for earnings and company-performance bets.

Below are five live bets on Polymarket and Kalshi where alternative data could help traders make a more informed prediction.

*Displayed probabilities as observed on August 26, 2026. Prices move continuously and may differ by the time of publication.

Lululemon: The Traffic and the Share Price Have Gone Opposite Ways

Polymarket prices a Lululemon beat at 87% against a $1.79 threshold, settling September 3. Meanwhile, the stock reflects deep investor skepticism: Lululemon traded near $365 in March 2025 and trades at $128.58 now, while its earnings multiple has compressed from 26.5 to 10.4.

The customer data did not follow the stock down. Estimated monthly visits ran 28.3 million last July and 37.7 million this July, a rise of 32.9% on the like-for-like month, and every month since March has come in above the equivalent month a year earlier. Headcount has gone from 23,979 to 25,217 over the same year, rising in most readings.

AltIndex Web Traffic Data against monthly average share price

The AI Score has moved differently from the share price. It read 46 in February 2025 when the stock was at $366 and reads 64 now with the stock at $128.58. That divergence suggests the deterioration in market expectations has been more severe than the deterioration in the alternative signals. It does not, by itself, predict whether quarterly EPS will clear $1.79.

The counterweight is the employee data. The share of Lululemon staff reporting a positive business outlook has fallen from 67% to 56% over the past year, and it has declined in almost every reading. Traffic measures whether customers still visit. It says nothing about what they pay once they arrive, and a promotional quarter can produce rising visits and a missed earnings line at the same time.

American Eagle: Revenue Growth Turned, and So Did Social Engagement

The American Eagle contract prices a beat at 92% against $0.21, settling September 2, and here the alternative data agrees with the market rather than arguing with it.

Estimated monthly visits reached 34.6 million in July against 24.2 million last July, a rise of 43.1%. Job postings are up 15.9% year over year and headcount is up 8.3%. Most importantly, quarterly revenue growth has crossed from negative to positive: the reported figure ran at minus 4.7% through the middle of last year and reads plus 9.7% now.

AltIndex Web Traffic Data against reported quarterly revenue growth

Social engagement is the signal that separates these two names. Follower counts on their own are close to useless for a brand this size, because they almost never fall and so a cooling brand still shows a rising line. Likes measured against followers can fall, and it is the better read. American Eagle's TikTok engagement has gone from 13.54 likes per follower in February to 14.14 now, while Lululemon's has sat flat between 8.87 and 9.43 across the same seven months. e.l.f. Beauty runs at more than 21 and Nike at about 5, which is roughly the ordering you would expect and a reason to trust the measure.

AltIndex Social Data, TikTok likes per follower

Instacart: The Contract Settles on a Number That Is Already Tracked

Kalshi's Instacart contract is the most literal fit of the five, because it settles on August app downloads and app downloads are a dataset AltIndex records. The brackets price above 110 at 97%, above 115 at 86% and above 120 at 84%, and the contract settles on September 7. AltIndex's download figures are on a different scale to Kalshi's brackets, which points at a narrower scope such as a single store or country, so the direction transfers across and the level does not.

Two other signals point the same way. Estimated monthly visits reached 49.1 million in July against 42.0 million last July, and the series has set a new high in three of the last four months. Instagram followers have gone from 185,189 in February 2025 to 263,144, a rise of 42.1% with an increase in every single month of the run.

AltIndex Instagram Followers and Web Traffic Data

Instacart is the case where a follower count carries information. A brand with 300 million followers cannot show growth that means anything, but a company adding audience from a base in the hundreds of thousands can, and Instacart's curve has not had a down month in nineteen. Alongside it, headcount is up 9.8% year over year and job postings are up 63%. What none of it settles is the bracket itself, since a contract that resolves on an exact download count needs the same measurement the contract uses, not a correlated one.

Tesla: Job Postings and Headcount Both Point Away From Cuts

Kalshi runs a contract on which large companies announce layoffs during 2026, with payouts scheduled for January 8, 2027. At the time of review, Tesla was priced near 45%, Alphabet at 44% and Nvidia at 6%. This is one of the closest structural fits on the list because layoffs are directly related to hiring and headcount. A sustained decline in open roles can precede a pullback, although it can also reflect ordinary recruiting cycles or a change in where jobs are posted.

Tesla's job postings have gone from 3,167 a month last August to 5,424 now, a rise of 71%, while headcount climbed from 77,279 to 90,229. That is evidence against a broad hiring retrenchment today. It is not proof that Tesla will avoid a targeted restructuring before year-end, particularly at a company that can hire aggressively in one business while cutting in another.

AltIndex Job Postings and LinkedIn Employee Data

Alphabet at 44% looks materially different. Its job postings peaked at 5,922 in March and have fallen in every month since, reaching 4,374 in August, which is 26% off the peak and the part of the sequence that normally arrives first.

PayPal: A Hiring Freeze Alongside the Filings

Polymarket's broader company-acquisition market has traded more than $18 million across all outcomes, while the PayPal outcome itself has attracted less than $100,000. It prices a PayPal acquisition before 2027 at about 50%. That distinction is important: the headline market looks deep, but the individual PayPal contract is still relatively thin.

CFO Jamie Miller bought 6,129 shares at $41.53 on June 15, the only insider purchase recorded in the past year against five sales, and the stock now trades at $62.10. Senator John Boozman disclosed a purchase on July 30. Neither means anyone knew about a transaction, and it is worth saying why plainly: congress filings can arrive weeks after the trade and disclose only a broad value range, while an executive buying a stock that had fallen by a third is an ordinary thing for an executive to do.

The hiring data supplies context those filings lack. PayPal's job postings fell from 1,041 a month last November to 117 in August, a decline of 89%, with the sharpest leg between May and June when the count dropped from 570 to 230. Headcount moved the other way, rising from 35,221 to 38,457. That combination points to a sharp slowdown in new hiring rather than an active reduction in the existing workforce. It may reflect cost discipline, a change in recruiting sources, completed hiring or a broader strategic shift. It is not reliable evidence of a sale process on its own.

The Bottom Line

As prediction markets introduce more company-specific bets, alternative data becomes increasingly valuable. These signals can reveal changes in customer demand, hiring, growth and engagement before the outcome of a contract is known. By matching the right data to the right bet, traders can make predictions based on how a company is actually performing - not just headlines or market sentiment.

Sources: AltIndex web traffic, app downloads, Instagram and TikTok audience, job postings, LinkedIn employee, employee business outlook, insider transaction, congress trading, reported revenue growth and AI Score data. Contract prices and volumes from Kalshi and Polymarket as observed on August 26, 2026; they move continuously. Prediction-market growth figures from Pew Research Center's May 2026 analysis, Kalshi's May 7, 2026 funding announcement and Intercontinental Exchange investor releases. Dick's Sporting Goods figures are from the company's second-quarter earnings release. Market prices are intraday and will have moved.

Disclosure: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. AltIndex aggregates publicly available alternative data signals. Past signal performance does not guarantee future results. Always do your own due diligence before making investment decisions.