Wealthsimple Predict is a standalone prediction-markets app, live in the Canadian app stores as of late July 2026, that sells Yes or No positions on real-world outcomes: Bank of Canada rate decisions, inflation prints, market levels, climate events. Contracts are priced in US dollars between one cent and 99 cents. Call it right and each contract settles at a dollar. Call it wrong and it settles at zero. The contracts trade on Kalshi, the leading US predictions exchange, and CIRO regulates the whole thing as derivatives trading. No sports, no elections, and every contract runs at least 30 days.
Should you use it? For most men reading this site, my honest answer is no, and the reason has less to do with the app, which is well built, than with what you would actually be doing on it. Unless you have a real risk to hedge, an event contract is a wager, and it forms you like one.
Here is everything worth knowing before you decide for yourself.
How Wealthsimple Predict Works
An event contract is a wager on a question that has a closing date. Will unemployment land above a stated figure this quarter? Will inflation come in above 3%? Will a stock like Dollarama or Canadian Tire close the quarter higher? Each question has a Yes and a No, and the price is the market's live guess at the odds: a Yes trading at 70 cents means the crowd puts roughly a 70% probability on it happening. At the deadline, the right side collects one dollar per contract and the wrong side collects nothing. You can sell out early if the price moves your way.
About 4,000 contracts were available at launch, organized under shelves labelled Canada, Markets, Companies, Economy, and Climate. I downloaded it the week it launched. It is clean and quick, easy in the way Wealthsimple is always easy, and I would not assume that is an accident.
Predict is a separate app with its own signup and the same identity checks as any brokerage account. Anyone of majority age in Canada can use it, with or without another Wealthsimple account. Your TFSA and RRSP cannot hold these contracts, but the Predict wallet tops up from your other Wealthsimple balances, a linked bank account, or an e-Transfer, and deposits are ready to trade almost immediately. The platform itself remains one I use daily and recommend; my full Wealthsimple review covers the boring core that is still excellent.
What It Costs
Trades run two cents US per contract, charged when you buy and again if you sell. That sounds tiny until you put it beside the contract prices. Buy $40 worth of a 40-cent Yes (100 contracts) and the $2 fee is 5% of your stake before the question even starts moving.
Currency is the quieter cost. Every contract is priced in US dollars, so Canadian money converts at Wealthsimple's usual foreign-exchange rate, 1.5% at this writing, once on the way in and once on the way out. Thinly traded questions also carry wide gaps between the buy and sell price, and the app will warn you about those markets. Read the fee disclosures inside the app before you assume anything is free.
What You Can and Can't Trade
CIRO approved three categories for Canada: economic indicators, financial markets, and climate. The two categories that made prediction markets a cultural story in the United States, sports and elections, are exactly the ones the regulator kept out, and contracts on violence or death are excluded entirely. Every contract must have at least 30 days to maturity, and the app walks you through an orientation before your first trade. Credit where due: this is a far more careful build than the offshore crypto prediction sites that will happily take a Canadian deposit tonight.
Is It Gambling?
Structurally, an event contract is a fixed-payout wager that happens to be regulated as a derivative. What you are doing with it depends on one question: does this position offset a real loss you would otherwise face?
A fuel-oil business genuinely loses money in a warm winter, so a contract that pays when temperatures stay high works like insurance. That hedging use is why these instruments exist. A salaried man holding Yes on an October rate cut has no such loss anywhere in his life. He has bought the chance to be right, at a price, and every dollar he wins is a dollar another trader lost. The app cannot make that anything other than what it is.
Scripture never bans gambling by name, and I won't pretend it does. It speaks instead, bluntly, to the appetite underneath: "Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it" (Proverbs 13:11). My position for the men I write for: gambling is not categorically prohibited for a Christian, and it is rarely neutral for one either. The real question is what the thing does to you. I take that question apart at length in prediction markets and the Christian case for and against buying a Yes.
Who Should Skip It
Three men should skip this app without a second thought. The man who has felt betting's hooks before, whether at the sports book or the crypto casinos that came after: this is the same mechanism with quieter topics. The man whose stake would carry a name that is already spoken for: rent, groceries, giving, the TFSA contribution. And the man who already checks things compulsively, because a live position is a subscription to checking.
Who might use it? The rare reader with a genuine business hedge, sized to the risk it offsets. And, cautiously, the man who treats it strictly as entertainment: an amount comparable to a night out, his wife in the loop, and a written dollar limit decided before he deposits. If that sounds like heavy machinery for a fun little app, you have understood the app.
Where to get the same information for free
Nearly all of Predict's genuine value is available without funding it. The prices are public, and they are often a more honest forecast than any pundit: if you want to know the market's odds on an October rate cut, you can simply look. Reading the number costs nothing and forms you toward nothing.
And if the itch is really about the future getting bigger, run this comparison first. Fifty dollars a month automated into an index fund inside your TFSA is about $18,000 contributed over 30 years, compounding to roughly $61,000 at 7%. The compound interest calculator will run your own numbers. I keep my investing deliberately dull, and I have written about why: boring is what winning usually looks like.
Whatever you decide, decide it as a steward: the men who end up glad, decades from now, bought assets that quietly grew, and left the expiring opinions to the crowd.
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you sign up or purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products I personally use. Full disclosure.
Common questions
What is Wealthsimple Predict?
Wealthsimple Predict is a standalone prediction-markets app that lets Canadians buy Yes or No positions on real-world outcomes, like Bank of Canada rate decisions or inflation numbers. Contracts trade on Kalshi, a regulated US predictions exchange, and are priced in US dollars between $0.01 and $0.99. A contract settles at $1 if you were right and $0 if you were wrong, and you can sell a position before it settles. Close to 4,000 contracts were available at launch.
How much does Wealthsimple Predict cost to use?
Trading costs two cents US per contract, charged on buys and again on sells, per launch-week reporting. Contracts are priced in US dollars, so Canadian-dollar deposits are also converted at Wealthsimple's usual foreign-exchange rate (1.5% at the time of writing) on the way in, and again on the way out. On small contract prices those costs are a meaningful drag, so read the app's own fee disclosures before trading.
Can you bet on sports or elections on Wealthsimple Predict?
No. CIRO, the Canadian investment regulator, has limited Wealthsimple's forecast contracts to economic indicators, financial markets, and climate events. Sports and election markets, the categories that made prediction markets famous in the United States, are excluded in Canada, and every contract must have at least 30 days to maturity.
Does Wealthsimple Predict connect to my TFSA or RRSP?
Your registered accounts cannot hold event contracts, and your positions live only in the separate Predict app. But the Predict wallet can be funded from your other Wealthsimple balances, a linked bank account, or an e-Transfer, and deposits are typically available to trade almost immediately. The pipe between your savings and a position on the future is short, which is exactly why it deserves a written rule before you download the app.
Is Wealthsimple Predict gambling?
Every event contract is structurally a fixed-payout wager, regulated as a derivative. Whether using one amounts to gambling depends on your reason. A business hedging a risk it already carries is buying something like insurance. A user with no underlying risk is staking money on an uncertain outcome for the chance of quick gain, which functions as gambling regardless of the label. The practical test: if you cannot name a real loss the position protects you from, treat it as a wager and decide with that honesty.
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