degenerate gambler
NYC
Joined December 2019
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Jacky Rosen crashed to 20c after this Ralston tweet.
She is currently trailing challenger Sam Brown by 6000 votes. Most of the rural counties are reported, while Clark and Washoe (NV’s blue counties) are at 86% and 75% respectively.
There are 13k mail in votes with missing or mismatched signature still in question. These likely skew heavily towards Rosen. The outcome may hinge on these.
Still, lots of blue votes from these counties. Might be the highest EV play rn
Unlike TIME's Person of the Year, @FT kept us on our toes a bit for this one. Jensen Huang was at like 70% just a couple days ago
Good morning, Asia. While you were sleeping, our most-read story was about the FT's pick for Person of the Year, US president-elect Donald Trump. on.ft.com/4glfdH5
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Been thinking this too. Love to see a diversity of markets but also need to tread carefully in this brave new world
"The reason why I've been critical of @Kalshi is because they're really rolling the dice. They're making a lot of long-shot bets.
If the courts intervene and if they're able to gum up the process at the @CFTC, maybe they win.
But my fear is that the consequences of their intervention will be to invite more regulatory backlash."
— @pjchougule
You should be extremely bullish on AOC's political prospects
"I'm a big AOC fan."
@RepJamesComer tells me he's supportive of @RepAOC in her bid for the top Democratic spot on the House Oversight Committee. He went on to say he thinks they would have "a good working relationship."
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This is kind of the elephant in the room when it comes to prediction market legalization and probably a large factor in why the CFTC can often hesitate to loosen regulations.
Tweet below is implying a hypothetical scenario where a biolab insider with top security clearance may see an opportunity to pile cash into dirt cheap pandemic contracts seeing that he has some capability of influencing the outcome.. and for obvious reasons this also means he's incentivized to cause harm to many people.
Endless other examples too, especially where the outcome can be heavily influenced by just one person or a handful of people. Sentencing of convicts is another comes to mind. I'd say the caveat here is if the outcome is high profile enough to make it into a prediction market, like the upcoming @PepMangione trial, then it should be easy to narrow down the list of potential insiders. In the sentencing example, all eyes would be on the judge. But of course this requires that robust enforcement be present in the first place.
I'm a huge proponent for the continued expansion of these markets in the US, but as they grow so does the importance for stricter protections against insider trading.
Part of me believes that the existence of a betting market for any subject increases the probability of it ever happening in the first place. Not sure if I like seeing this being a betting topic
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Submitted my first market to @Kalshi today:
"Who will be the Democratic nominee for governor in Michigan?"
apnews.com/article/michigan-…
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Speculating here but I wouldn't rule out some sort of a quid pro quo agreement between DeSantis and Trump. Ron gets promised SecDef and Lara becomes a senator
apnews.com/article/lara-trum…
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TIME releases its POTY shortlist: time.com/7200122/person-of-t…
The only alternative to DJT I am moderately concerned about is Netanyahu who doesn’t even have a contract on @Kalshi. Gut says it won’t be Elon. And I’ve hedged Kamala so cheap that I’ll actually win a bigger profit if it’s her.
Trump's case for @TIME Person of the Year 2024:
kalshi.com/markets/kxtime/ti…
- Legal issues dominate headlines early in the year: E. Jean Carroll, NY fraud trial, hush money trial, SCOTUS immunity ruling
- Campaign kicks into full swing
- Survives assassination in Butler, PA and emerges with the most notorious photo of his political career
- Survives a second attempt a few months later
- Wins a decisive electoral victory
- Nominates a slew of controversial cabinet picks, telegraphing a historically unprecedented second term
This last point is important. TIME does not reveal its decision-making process, but over so many years POTY has become a chronicle of world events. In his second term, Trump is expected to push boundaries and flip government norms on their heads. Whatever happens, TIME will not wish to pass up an opportunity to immortalize in their magazine the election preceding what could be a radically transformative era of American politics.
Trump is the clear frontrunner so this opinion is not controversial. But with markets that depend on arbitrary blackbox decision-making by a handful of people, there is always the risk of someone going rogue with their opinion. Nothing is certain.
Chances are we will see results in a couple days. At current prices, the contract is still offering 30% ROI.
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Trump's case for @TIME Person of the Year 2024:
kalshi.com/markets/kxtime/ti…
- Legal issues dominate headlines early in the year: E. Jean Carroll, NY fraud trial, hush money trial, SCOTUS immunity ruling
- Campaign kicks into full swing
- Survives assassination in Butler, PA and emerges with the most notorious photo of his political career
- Survives a second attempt a few months later
- Wins a decisive electoral victory
- Nominates a slew of controversial cabinet picks, telegraphing a historically unprecedented second term
This last point is important. TIME does not reveal its decision-making process, but over so many years POTY has become a chronicle of world events. In his second term, Trump is expected to push boundaries and flip government norms on their heads. Whatever happens, TIME will not wish to pass up an opportunity to immortalize in their magazine the election preceding what could be a radically transformative era of American politics.
Trump is the clear frontrunner so this opinion is not controversial. But with markets that depend on arbitrary blackbox decision-making by a handful of people, there is always the risk of someone going rogue with their opinion. Nothing is certain.
Chances are we will see results in a couple days. At current prices, the contract is still offering 30% ROI.
This is one of those outcomes that seems so cut and dry in hindsight– of course a father will do anything to protect his son, right? But the previous odds prove it wasn’t really so obvious, and indeed I really struggled to form a strong conviction on this one myself, no pun intended
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One of the great abilities of prediction markets is that the prospect of financial gain compels insiders, or at least those with more intimate knowledge than the general population, to put money behind the absolute correct outcome.
Which sounds bad (and certainly can be) but it also coaxes out very accurate information about an outcome and implicitly places it in front of the public, who can then at least interpret it.
Whereas without the financial incentive, this information may very well remain bottled up until its already breaking news.
At this point it’s clear that Kalshi not only has a lucrative competitive regulatory advantage, but that they will also go to great lengths to protect it from competition.
Some years ago Kalshi was rumored to have leveraged its alleged connections to the CFTC to engineer PredictIt’s downfall. Though they denied this, the backlash from the prediction market community was nevertheless intense– arguably worse then than it is right now. Kalshi had just come onto the scene and many traders were already swearing never to use it.
Despite this, Kalshi has seen record volume in the past year and become a regular fixture in mainstream political discourse. They have reached #1 on the App Store during election week. They have survived and thrived, because at the end of the day the users still flock to the “most legal” product with the lowest barrier to entry. It has its regulatory advantages to thank for that.
On the topic of Antonio Brown DMs, I believe this kind of zero sum thinking does more harm than good to the prediction market space. I do trust there is a future in which Kalshi, Polymarket, and others, can carve out their respective niches and succeed alongside each other.
But frankly speaking, the win-at-all-costs strategy will probably indeed work out for Kalshi in the long term. Like liberals eating at Chick-Fil-A, reputation takes a backseat when the product is good enough.
"If @kalshi succeed in killing @polymarket, or Polymarket has to shut down through whatever means, that does not mean that everyone is going to flood to Kalshi. If Kalshi manages to tarnish their reputation, there are other options already available to people." — @flippidot
teapaw.org/i/spaces/1mnxeAoOronxX
This is a play I still really like.
Currently holding No's on >50,000, >100,000, >250,000 and thinking of buying more. Per @Kalshi rules, the market tracks the difference in federal employee count between Jan 2025 - Jan 2026. That's just the first year of Trump's term.
We don't know too much about Elon's @DOGE yet, but he has mentioned its work will "conclude no later than July 4, 2026." DOGE itself is not an official agency and does not have the authority to make the cuts itself, but can influence Trump and others who possibly could. If the federal workforce is as complex and bloated as @VivekGRamaswamy claims, it's entirely likely that at best the only thing it has produced by this deadline is reports and recommendations.
If they do happen to get this part done a few months into 2025 (a big "if") would Trump attempt to initiate RIF right away? Given his emphasis on portraying a strong economy, he may not be eager to kick off his term with the economic impact of laying off hundreds of thousands of workers.
Even if he does decide to get moving on it right away, it's unclear that he could get it done within a year, in part due to the numerous obstacles and legal roadblocks he could face: govexec.com/workforce/2024/1…
Lastly, I'm not even sure how much Trump personally cares for Elon and Vivek. DOGE could easily be a pet project to reward their support and keep them busy while he focuses toward delivering on his own campaign promises. It could fade into obscurity. There's only a 50% chance that Elon will even stick around for the whole thing: kalshi.com/markets/kxmuskdog…
Prices for these No contracts are still in the 30c-65c range.
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The one caveat here is that federal employee morale is reportedly low, and it's possible we may see >50k resigning or leaving for the private sector. But per FRED data, it's quite uncommon to see swings greater than +/- 100k federal employees in a single year: fred.stlouisfed.org/series/C…
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now that Tulsi is nominated, I am starting to sweat my RFK Nos
Recent nominations of hawks (Rubio, Stefanik, Waltz) actually probably somewhat improves the odds of a perceived antiwar figure, like Gabbard or Massie, to the cabinet in some lesser department as a way to retain favor with the trump voter coalition
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