YouSaid · the spoken record

Thomas Peterffy

lines on the record: 37
first: 2026-04-09
most recent: 2026-04-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Contracts related to when will they have or the average salary they will have or etc but the problem is that the price of Google is a security you know that the price of the shares are Securities. So the legislation says that anything that has an impact on the stock price would be on the financial statement would be a security. So there's a lot of stuff that has an impact on the financial statement. But nobody is listing it anyway. So this quagmire would have to be cleaned up. And then we would have a much better market.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think the big regulatory problem is that There are many questions concerning specific companies that we would love to ask, but we do not know if the question would be a security or a commodity. And do not know who should properly regulate it. And therefore, we don't ask these questions. But it would be extremely useful for us to be able to ask about the future developments of NVIDIA or Microsoft or Google or”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Economic activity. So the money you put at risk, but the money is not laying around. The broker will take that money and put it into treasury bills, right? So as you know, there is an awful lot of money that is in treasury bills, and that's financing our deficit. And so that's where your money will be employed.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is, I don't think there is a good way to, I mean, I'm always stunned when I read a these projections from consulting firms about how big something will be so many years. Ahead of time, I have no idea how to evaluate that, but all I know is that it's going to be very, very big because it's extremely useful. And it's a very simple way for all of us to direct our decision making, a prediction market and to hedge our decision making.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, option prices are probabilistic. Prediction markets are probabilistic. That's what my initial impetus was for prediction markets to teach people probabilities because people tend to not think probabilistically. They tend to think, well, either this will happen or will not happen and that somebody knows. And that's not how it is. There is a probability for something to happen, and nobody knows what really will happen, right?”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and that eventually that turned into a formula and code. So I used that computer. And if you go to interactive brokers today, there is something we call probability lab where we can display where we do display the probability distribution associated with the future price changes of any stock that we derive from the existing option prices. So you can see that there”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nah, because So I had an olive computer at home, a desktop, olive desktop computer at home. And when I started to think about options, I started to run a lot of simulations and see at what prices I would break even. And then eventually they wrote the idea of a probability distribution curve based on which I would determine the prices of options that after selling to myself many options I would break even at which price and that's how I determined but the correct value for an option is”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For a long time, we have started our first automated trading systems in 1983 and continued developing that ever since. And then eventually when other traders came in and bought out the order flow from brokerage firms, we didn't think that. We should do that so then leave an out of the market making business. Up to that point we were the largest market makers in the world.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's a huge leap in technological development, but it's basically as a computer programmer. I look at it basically as a new higher-level language that is much, much, much, much more powerful than anything that came before. But qualitatively is not different than the way we went from machine language to assembler language to Fortron and Cobal and eventually C and all the other languages. So this is a natural language. So AI is basically a higher level language, which is a natural language, and it also has to it available all the data that exists in the world. So that's why it is so immensely powerful. But as far as trading is concerned, basically automated trading has existed.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They were computer generated. I had a computer at home And I had developed my own optional formula in much earlier since nineteen seventy.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And yet I was really traumatized. I lost 90,000 dollars and it was horrible. But I still say to you that I think the best thing we could do about inside information is just to get the news out there as fast as possible and forget about persecuting people”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And nobody said anything. Everybody was stunned. And I said, 38s. And he said, okay, how many? And I said, 500. I was so overwhelmed by the month of profit I was suddenly making in a five-minute period of time that I gave up all caution and I sold him the 500. So I was as a result 200 short. And then in the next several minutes, the stock halted trading and half an hour later it reopened with the news that DuPont had a fantastic quarter and they were splitting the stock 341. And it opened way, way up. So the option I saw 200 of net for 3.8s opened at $4.5.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and it was the day before expiration and there was a very cheap out of the money call that was to be expired the next day and somebody came in and according to my fair value sheets that I only I had in those days because I had my own options formula and I generated these sheets for myself that option was worth about 25 26 and somebody came in and offered it at 3H which is $18 offered to me 300 of those options at $18 and I bought all 300 which was at that time the biggest trade I've ever done and just as the broker walks out another broker walks in and he says where can I buy 500 of these”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So when I bought my seat on the American stock exchange as an option streeter in 1977 and I had $200,000 of saved capital that I started my option trading business with on the floor of the American Stock Exchange and maybe a year or so later I was standing in Dupan and in those days options were trading in 16s and 8s.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Avoid it's very, very difficult and cumbersome. Why don't we just Do away with it and let the information come out as soon as possible.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, insider trading has always been. I mean earlier on when I started my career I lost half my initial capital based on insider trade. So I'm extremely familiar with the damage it can cause. But on the other hand, in spite of that, I'm in favor of not having any rules against insider trading. I would like all the information out there as soon as it's available. Because look, as a society, we're better off knowing as soon as possible anything that is knowable, right? So why do we have to wait several, first of all, when you face with a merger or acquisition situation where most of the insider trading is happening, right? The secretaries, the lawyers, everybody knows about it. They go home, they tell, they revives, their husbands. So it eventually always filters out. So it's almost impossible to...”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is there work? So fungibility is a great issue and it is in the interest of the market participants to create as much fungibility as possible. So accordingly, we are going to structure our contracts to be identical.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. So we are coming out at the end of May with a consolidated feed. Contracts that exist on cellular platform, we will have consolidated so that when somebody comes to us interactive brokers to look at the market, we will give them a consolidated feed, just like we do on stocks where stocks trade on, I don't know, 20 or so markets and we always have the best bid and offer and we always provide best executions based on all the possible venues where that stock trades and we will do the same thing on prediction markets.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, for a trader, an economist is very confusing because it depends on which one you talk to, right? The prediction markets cure that deficiency, right?”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think you see that what will happen is that economists will begin to participate in the prediction markets. And instead of issuing their predictions, they will trade their own positions and good ones will make a lot of money and bad ones will lose. But can we be.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, no, you can go to the Fed funds market, not the bond markets. You can go to the Fed funds markets. That is true, but that's another interesting thing. So Fed Funds markets existed for a long time, and it only recently that people really consult the Fed fund markets when they are wondering about rates and no longer talk to the economists. Because just two years ago people kept talking about which economist says what.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, absolutely, certainly, certainly. You know, right now you're saying that is the Fed going to Cadrezo or not. I mean, yeah, people are consulting economists and say that's what the consensus opinion is. But it's not as clear as just look at the”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're working on that right now. Optonize in a very easy Situation because you see a broker always has to worry about providing leverage. So most brokerage firms when they go bust because of the leverage they provide and if you look at the big Wall Street crisis they all have to do with leverage always. But eventually we will have to provide leverage. The question is how do you structure this? Going to be, I'm sure there'll be some firms that will go bust on leverage in prediction markets, yes.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, look, I mean, we are in the very lucky circumstance where we have a flourishing, profitable business so we can support this crazy addiction to Prediction market that is basically a loss leader and we are very sure that eventually it will be very profitable.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So then I went to the CFTC and I asked for my own license. And they took three years to work it through and give it to us, but we eventually got it last year. Actually, we got it in 24 just before the elections.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It took hold enough for the people who funded Polymarket and Kalchi to see it and to play with it, and then they had a better idea and they went forward with it. And Karlshi went to Mazur, went to the CFTC and got himself licensed. And I was really upset when I saw that. And then, of course, you see, it was easy for him because they had nothing. So they had nothing to lose. You see, the problem is that when you have a flourishing business, it's very hard to do new things because the downside is so big for you. So I wanted to buy Galshi, but he wouldn't entertain a sale. They didn't even give me a price. What year wisdom? Sorry?”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the problem was that we had some consultants at the firm that were doing some other work. And they found out that we were working on prediction markets and at that time we were trying to go for a banking license. And they said, well, you will never get your banking license if you come up with this prediction market. As a matter of fact, the SEC will not take kindly to it and you will have all kinds of problems if you really do this. So what we did, we already had built the whole system. So what we did was we released it for phantom money. And people were playing around on it for phantom money and that eventually petered out because phantom money is not really interesting. But”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In You're probably correct in that although we have had in the past started several indexes and various futures contracts. Indexes and futures contract different ones, but they already existed. So the prediction market as such is, yes, you are correct. It's the first market where nothing has existed like it.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In a big way, yes, we've never done anything as large as this that is so different than what already existed. But as we were going along building out the platform over the last almost five decades, we certainly have always been on the edge of trying to bring in new things.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we are choosing contracts that in our minds have questions, the answers to which have serious economic consequences. So, for example, global warming, I think is a huge question, maybe not this year, but 10, 20 years from now it certainly will be, or the rate of adoption of AI or I mean, you know, really significant questions that basically will determine how we live our lives 10 to 20 years from now. And therefore, it's important for us to have questions to those answers so that people that enter schools today or decide to buy a house somewhere or decide what profession they are going to study and develop into these sorts of questions. Deserve to have serious answers so that they can decide what to do.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is by choice. We prefer to focus and concentrate on serious questions having to do with our clients' investments. Maybe some of them would like us to have sports, but we just don't want to distract them with that.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“investors basically other than investors in the prediction markets. So for them it's first of all it is hard to maintain yourself only up until it really takes off. It's hard to generate enough trading volume to make a profit. So they had to add things like sports and of course that has become their mainstay and they are now very profitable due to sports. So if they didn't do sports maybe they couldn't even support the platform. I don't know.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So don't forget that we are very different companies, interactive brokers has a large following of serious successful institutional investors and serious investors who are managing relatively large portfolios on our platform. Because she doesn't have that. So for us, prediction markets are an addendum that enables us to basically run out our offering and our customers have the ability to gauge such questions, whether a recession are likely a recession is going to be.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To be made. Yeah, but I think over time people have become more familiar with the idea of what an option is and it is a fairly complex idea relative to what the prediction markets are. That's why we try to come up with something simpler than options. And as far as that is concerned, I think we have done that. So it is not going to be as complex for people to understand prediction contract as it is to understand an options contract. So I think that it will not take equally long time to develop sufficient liquidity.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, at this point, it's very similar to any other market when it starts, liquidity is always a big question, and it takes a long time to gather sufficient liquidity if you look at, for example, the options markets that have been run over 54 years, I think. Initially, there was very little liquidity and it was very difficult to trade more than, say, 20 or 30 contracts at a time. Nowadays, you can trade thousands or maybe even millions of contracts. So it has developed over the past five decades really well. And the stock market is basically similar.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm absolutely convinced. So the stock market. In the future, basically in the future of different companies. But, you know, some of how those companies are actually going to end up faring in the future has a lot to do with the economic environment and social environment in the future. And basically we are left to our own devices to decipher what the future holds. the prediction markets gives us an opportunity to gather experts around who are not afraid to put their money on the line and express what they think and to collect a consensus opinion so that we all know what we can possibly expect if it's probably a better guess than what we individually could come up with.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So from that point of view, the prediction market is no different than the stock market except it addresses much larger and more important on the one hand, on the other hand much sillier and less important questions. So it all depends on What you ask so the stock market has Microsoft and NVIDIA and also has, you know, the GameStop and Other silly stocks, right? So it is a parallel situation. So you cannot blame prediction market, the mechanism itself for the silly things that some platforms list, right? The idea here is to deal with questions, to gather the consensus opinion. People who are preferably experts or are deep thinkers on the questions that we're going to ask and to gather their consensus so that we can all include that in our decision making and planning for the future.”
2026-04-09 · Odd Lots · Thomas Peterffy on Interactive Brokers' Plan to Professionalize Prediction Markets · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source