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Uncovering insiders and alpha on Polymarket with AI

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Re: Uncovering insiders and alpha on Polymarket with AI

#21

Post by conformist »

> “Hedge funds invest a ton in "alternative data", like credit card transaction data or satellite-imagery (are Walmart's parking lots full?) and need to process as much relevant information as possible to make predictions that are relevant to investments. “

Ah yes the famous credit card data and Walmart parking lots example that hedge funds were giving a few years ago in every interview and news article. Safe to assume that specifically these data sets are not what you should look at to make money.

Re: Uncovering insiders and alpha on Polymarket with AI

#22

Post by conformist »

syntaxing wrote: post #8

Isn’t this the motivation behind polymarket? To incentivize those that have information to bet as a signal of “truth”. What I don’t get is why would anyone bet on this stuff that don’t have insider information besides those with gambling addiction.

There’s also a vague argument around hedging some actual risks that some market participants genuinely want to hedge… which depends a lot on the specific bet. Eg hedging exposure to specific political events, wars or even company announcements can be relevant and worth a premium for non-insiders. Where there’s a premium to be collected there are speculators to do so.

Re: Uncovering insiders and alpha on Polymarket with AI

#23

Post by kibwen »

conformist wrote: post #20
doomslayer999 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because taking high variance slightly negative EV shots is not a terrible strategy when you have a long time horizon.

By “not terrible” you mean “bad but not very bad” and not “good” right?

"High variance, slightly-negative EV shots on a long time horizon" is a gambling addict's way of justifying the old adage, "sure, we're losing money on each sale, but we'll make up for it in volume!"

Re: Uncovering insiders and alpha on Polymarket with AI

#24

Post by kibwen »

moduspol wrote: post #5
delichon wrote: post #3

> Clearly, these insiders have figured out a way to cash in on information. Whether that's kosher is out-of-scope here To the extent that the value of prediction markets is in their power to predict, insider trading is kosher. Wholesome even.

Indeed. For those of us not gambling, it's really quite beneficial.

Prediction markets can only pay out based on public information, which means that prediction markets can only "reveal information" like this for things that would have been public knowledge anyway. And insiders are always risking that leaking their insider info might influence the outcome of the bet against them (like if leaking the date of a covert military operation causes the operation to be rescheduled), so they're financially incentivized to wait as long as possible before tacitly revealing that information. So prediction markets are the worst possible way of revealing hidden information: you will only learn about things you would have already known, and only when it's too late to make any use of that knowledge.

Re: Uncovering insiders and alpha on Polymarket with AI

#25

Post by tyre »

doomslayer999 wrote: post #12
syntaxing wrote: post #8

Isn’t this the motivation behind polymarket? To incentivize those that have information to bet as a signal of “truth”. What I don’t get is why would anyone bet on this stuff that don’t have insider information besides those with gambling addiction.

Because taking high variance slightly negative EV shots is not a terrible strategy when you have a long time horizon.

this is the "lose money on every sale but make it up on scale" version for gamblers and I love that for you.

Re: Uncovering insiders and alpha on Polymarket with AI

#26

Post by w10-1 »

Speculation and concern from a naive observer:

Is it polymarket presenting this ability to detect insiders? Or is someone trying to sell the service of detecting insiders to those wanting to know if bets are on equal footing? (or wanting to follow insiders? or wanting to hide your identity by making multiple accounts? Are there per-account fees, when polymarket might encourage people to make multiple accounts?)

Regardless, polymarket seems to be on balance corrupting, by monetizing and normalizing use of inside information, which violates agency principles. It's not clear that it really offers hedging or predictive benefits.

When trading firms do better (after data discovery and analysis), there's some evidence they're better than other firms, and you can trust them with some money. But when there's a public prediction market, the only benefit is to the insiders.

Re: Uncovering insiders and alpha on Polymarket with AI

#27

Post by _alternator_ »

w10-1 wrote: post #26

Speculation and concern from a naive observer: Is it polymarket presenting this ability to detect insiders? Or is someone trying to sell the service of detecting insiders to those wanting to know if bets are on equal footing? (or wanting to follow insiders? or wanting to hide your identity by making multiple accounts? Are there per-account fees, when polymarket might encourage people to make multiple accounts?) Regar…

This is largely the classical objection to prediction markets. But prediction markets do have value to outside of the markets because people want to know the future.

Re: Uncovering insiders and alpha on Polymarket with AI

#28

Post by moduspol »

kibwen wrote: post #24
moduspol wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. For those of us not gambling, it's really quite beneficial.

Prediction markets can only pay out based on public information, which means that prediction markets can only "reveal information" like this for things that would have been public knowledge anyway. And insiders are always risking that leaking their insider info might influence the outcome of the bet against them (like if leaking the date of a covert military operation causes the operation to be rescheduled), so they'…

There's also a financial incentive to get your bets in early, while the odds are still in your favor. The longer you wait, the higher the risk that your secret becomes public knowledge.

I agree it's not perfect, but I think you're underplaying a lot of the value.

Re: Uncovering insiders and alpha on Polymarket with AI

#29

Post by [deleted] »

w10-1 wrote: post #26

Speculation and concern from a naive observer: Is it polymarket presenting this ability to detect insiders? Or is someone trying to sell the service of detecting insiders to those wanting to know if bets are on equal footing? (or wanting to follow insiders? or wanting to hide your identity by making multiple accounts? Are there per-account fees, when polymarket might encourage people to make multiple accounts?) Regar…

[deleted]

Re: Uncovering insiders and alpha on Polymarket with AI

#30

Post by peterjliu »

w10-1 wrote: post #26

Speculation and concern from a naive observer: Is it polymarket presenting this ability to detect insiders? Or is someone trying to sell the service of detecting insiders to those wanting to know if bets are on equal footing? (or wanting to follow insiders? or wanting to hide your identity by making multiple accounts? Are there per-account fees, when polymarket might encourage people to make multiple accounts?) Regar…

Post author here: To clarify, this is not a post from Polymarket.

This is talking about using Compound AI (product I'm working on) to query Polymarket data, including finding insiders, just as a fun example analysis you could do.

Often you need a well-calibrated probability of a future event to feed into some other analysis, and Polymarket is pretty great for that. An example is how much insurance (hedge) to buy for some disastrous event.

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