61–70 of 201 posts
There's no problem here at all; except perhaps the wildly absurd fantasy of "perfectly rational (and/or intelligent) markets," which the popularity of e.g. lotteries and casinos immediately disproves. Not much to see here.
First, let's clear up some confusion.
Markets are not accurate ways to determine accurate predictions. Somebody, somewhere is getting confused with "Wisdom of the Crowds" thinking.
In the "Wisdom of the Crowds" - take, for example, everyone at the State fair taking a guess at how heavy a bull is - everyone has a single guess (and only one guess), and on aggregate you'll probably (that word is doing a lot of work here), get a more accurate answer than any one answer probably (again, lot of work there), will. You're reducing a distribution of guesses into a single number, and the distribution of those guesses is likely uniform, and likely going to find an average (and a median), quite close to the true value.
Markets are not that. They are not efficient, they aren't accurate predictions. They are about weight of money. One moron who is hellbent on a World view with $10m in his account goes up against 1000 people with $10 each in their account, is going to move the number in their favour.
We see this irrationality every day in sports trading, stocks, commodities, options, FX, crypto, you name it.
In fact irrationality is so common in markets because of the weight of money there is a famous saying (often misattributed to Keynes):
"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."
Time and time again its come true. All you need to do is look into the LTCM fiasco where Nobel Prize winners in economics (literally the creators of the Black-Scholes model), took a rational view of the market, bet on it big, and almost took down Wall Street in its entirety. They weren't wrong, they were just on the wrong side of the weight of money.
I spend a lot of time trading sports (gambling is legal and tax free where I live, and well regulated betting exchanges exist), and thinking a lot about value. What does it mean to say a price about a selection in a market is wrong when it comes to some men running a field after a ball? There's a lot of people interested in this problem, and there is some evidence that they're not awful at it (Vegas lines on NFL games for example, adjusted to remove the house edge, converted into probabilities, aren't far away from observed outcomes), but every day awful prices are put up all over the place and still taken as if value by morons.
Is it any surprise that newly-minted crypto-millionaires hold a lot of money in a market and can throw the price off? Not really.
What you should do about it? Bet against. Take the action. Understand Kelly criterion, do the math, and trade that. You will bring the market back to reasonable pricing through applying your own weight of money and make a profit while doing so.
Why aren't others doing so? Who knows. Liquidity, being busy with something else, not wanting to, there's a multitude of reasons. But when you spot value - somebody offering you money on the table betting for things that are literally impossible - I suggest you stop complaining and fill your boots. Morons are born every minute, but it's not often enough a lucky millionaire one is prepared to hand you their money on a plate.
If media pundits are looking at these things as predictors of something, well you know there is one less media pundit to trust on this topic as they clearly have got confused. The next time they spout something that sounds statistical or mathematical or based in science, question if it actually is. Or if they, like many others before them, have confused markets for efficient proxies to uncover genuine wisdom, through the use of weight of money as the best means to extract secrets from the gods.
There's no problem here at all; except perhaps the wildly absurd fantasy of "perfectly rational (and/or intelligent) markets," which the popularity of e.g. lotteries and casinos immediately disproves. Not much to see here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Even completely rational prediction markets generally have a structural problem with events with likelihoods close to 1.0 or 0.0. This leads to cases where conspiracy type events have much higher likelihoods than they should, leading people to assume the market has lost all rationality when actually it hasn't. Is there academic research on this by any chance? Recently I've been wondering if there is a similar issue…
> Is there academic research on this by any chance Read "Secrets of Sand Hill Road". It's written by Scott Kupor - one of the Managing Partner at A16Z - and explains in depth how the VC model works. It's also required reading if you want to interview at a VC fund, and highly recommended by other founders to learn how to better strategize when raising funds. Secrets of Sand Hill Road, Monetizing Innovation, and Workin…
I'm actually asking out of curiosity, born of working in and around SV companies over the last 10+ years, rather than anything practical.
The election wasn’t “over” until certification happened (late) on January 6.
Why should bettors be prohibited from continuing to bet?
And worse, if bets were resolved too early, then chaos would have ensued in the betting market if the electors were not certified and the House selected Donald Trump.
Many ppl here may be too young to remember 2000 where recounts kept going on and on in Florida and the Supreme Court intervened.
Again, I’m not advocating any position, I’m just pointing out that the election isn’t over just because $NEWS_SOURCE declares a winner.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I would assume 90% dudes with strong conservative leanings So that would be a good place to make money, and ultimately make these markets better at predicting.
sure, and thanks for agreeing with my premise! but liberals are not really into stupid gambling games, so this "market" is inherently stocked with a limited supply of mindshare
As many mentioned here, the fees are high. That contributes to market inefficiency for sure.
Arbitrage opportunities pop up there all the time, but ones that are profitable after the fees less so. They do happen though.
He is neglecting how long contracts take to settle. There’s a lag of two months between when the election and when president is sworn in. It’s not unreasonable to sell your winning position at 98% just to be able to bet on more things.
It was the first time in 20 years of hoping for such an opportunity that I managed to get to bet on something that had already happened. That’s every gambler’s dream and I’m unaware of many instances of it happening without breaking laws or trickery. But even then, you bet 93 cents to win 7 and then pay 5% on cashout so it wasn’t exactly making people rich.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is there academic research on this by any chance Read "Secrets of Sand Hill Road". It's written by Scott Kupor - one of the Managing Partner at A16Z - and explains in depth how the VC model works. It's also required reading if you want to interview at a VC fund, and highly recommended by other founders to learn how to better strategize when raising funds. Secrets of Sand Hill Road, Monetizing Innovation, and Workin…
Working Backwards, the Amazon book, or something else?
The example the author gives is the 2020 election. Without rehashing anything or endorsing anyone’s viewpoint, there were lots of issues being raised, lots of court cases in flight, and possible procedural issues in the states and in the Congress related to electors and certification. The election wasn’t “over” until certification happened (late) on January 6. Why should bettors be prohibited from continuing to bet?…