Apple has updated its insider trading policy to explicitly prohibit employees from using confidential company information to place bets on prediction markets, highlighting growing concerns about how sensitive corporate information could be exploited through emerging financial platforms.
The move reflects the increasing popularity of prediction markets and the challenges companies face in preventing employees from turning privileged knowledge into personal financial gains.
The updated policy makes clear that employees cannot use material nonpublic information to trade or participate in prediction markets.
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This restriction applies to situations where workers might possess advance knowledge of significant corporate developments, including product launches, financial results, executive decisions, acquisitions, or other confidential business activities that could influence market outcomes.
Prediction markets allow participants to buy and sell contracts based on the likelihood of future events. Unlike traditional financial markets, where investors trade assets such as stocks and bonds.
These platforms allow users to speculate on questions ranging from election results and economic indicators to corporate announcements and technological developments.
Platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi have helped bring prediction markets into the mainstream, attracting growing interest from retail traders, institutional participants, and technology enthusiasts.
Their expanding reach has also raised questions about whether individuals with privileged access to information could gain an unfair advantage by trading on events before the public learns about them.
Apple’s policy update addresses precisely this risk. Employees working on confidential projects may know about developments that could significantly influence the outcome of prediction market contracts.
Allowing them to exploit that knowledge could undermine market integrity and expose both employees and the company to legal and reputational consequences. Importantly, the restriction is not a blanket ban on prediction markets.
Apple has not prohibited employees from participating in event contracts or wagering on information. It targets activity involving confidential information obtained through their work.
Employees may hold opinions about elections, sports or economic events, but cannot turn privileged knowledge into a trading advantage. The rule also extends beyond Apple.
It covers confidential information about suppliers, manufacturers, vendors, customers and business partners. Employees cannot use sensitive details learned through work to trade contracts involving another company’s announcements or performance.
They are prohibited from passing such information to others who could bet. The updated language appears in Exhibit 19.1 of Apple’s fiscal 2026 Form 10-K, filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The policy covers directors, officers, employees, independent contractors and consultants, as well as family members and entities subject to its rules. Apple says the restriction applies whether or not the activity qualifies as insider trading or securities trading under applicable law.
Violations can result in disciplinary action, including termination and repayment of equity awards. This matters because prediction markets combine trading and betting.
Event contracts can create incentives to obtain knowledge about company decisions, while pseudonymous accounts may make identifying traders difficult. Platform rules against insider activity do not eliminate that risk.
Apple’s decision sends a message to corporate America: confidential information must remain protected regardless of the marketplace used to monetize it.
As prediction markets expand, companies may increasingly need policies and employee education to address risks insider trading rules were not designed to handle.