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Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

theguardian.com

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Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#251

Post by janalsncm »

a2128 wrote: post #126
janalsncm wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was my thought. If these markets continue allowing insiders, it’ll drive all of the cash from regular people away. So there will be way less money for insiders to win even if they are allowed. So the perception of insiders is pretty bad for prediction markets as a business imo. The sooner they knock off the rhetoric about the “theory” behind prediction markets and start thinking about it like a business, the soo…

I think the market could adapt if regular people left. Insider trading would become multilayered and complex. Insiders would scheme against lower-level insiders; decisionmakers would try to trick insiders into thinking that one thing will happen before doing the complete opposite thing. The world would become more erratic and unpredictable, even insiders wouldn't know what is going on. Although Polymarket is currentl…

The problem is that the number of people who have any sort of “insider” (material non public) info at all is orders of magnitude lower than the number of people who are well-versed in material public info. And not all insiders are going to place bets.

Kalshi and poly market are going after mass market appeal which is why they buy Super Bowl ads.

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#252

Post by austhrow743 »

airstrike wrote: post #195
austhrow743 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More accurate information about the world allows for more effective decision making.

If people are insider trading so blatantly, there's no "more accurate information" here until it's too late and it's already news. You're just getting scammed

What do you mean "it's already news"? As in it's already happened?

I don't understand why insider trading would only happen as something becomes news. The inside knowledge haver is risking the information leaking some other way before they make their bet. Some very risk averse insider traders (lol?) may do so, but others are going to make their bets when they learn their information.

Assuming that they don't though, and every insider trader only ever makes their bets right before an event, I don't see how that changes anything? People working with non-insider knowledge are still going to be betting against each other before that point. They are still going to establish a likelihood of a thing happening that's more accurate than I would by myself.

The potential for scamming is high at low dollar figures sure. At some point of volume though, it's going to become too expensive to do.

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#253

Post by whamlastxmas »

93po wrote: post #197
elAhmo wrote: post #106

It’s not perfectly timed bets, it’s called insider trading. Just one more thing this administration has brought into mainstream.

Gambling is a state regulation and Trump has absolutely nothing to do with it other than indirectly through supreme court appointments, but even the 2018 ruling that gave more power to states included votes by two democrat appointed justices - so if you're going to blame trump you also need to blame clinton and obama

Lmao at pure facts getting downvoted

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#254

Post by rapjr9 »

Perhaps these trades are the result of a national security compromise. The current administration has reducing spending on cybersecurity, so perhaps Trump's own phone has been compromised and a foreign country is using the information to profit from the information. Something like this has happened before:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/06/trump-p...

Would be ironic if Iran was getting funding this way.

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#255

Post by stouset »

ShinTakuya wrote: post #241
stouset wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> making a very good side income If you had a reliable edge, your income would be exponential. Why isn’t it?

Do you need a reliable edge or just a slightly better than average edge?

[dead]

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#256

Post by drewgross »

jaredklewis wrote: post #207
jackyinger wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insider trading is unethical, and has long been recognized as such. It is outrageous for you to suggest that it is a good thing. It is not a free market if there is insider trading. If insiders are trading other market participants are by definition getting screwed by what was advertised as a fair, impartial system. You certainly wouldn't participate in a market where you did not think you had fair odds. Tho maybe yo…

> Insider trading is unethical It is illegal to insider trade in financial markets, which makes sense to me. But financial markets and prediction markets are different; one exists to surface capital, the other information. Insider trading is forbidden in financial markets because allowing it would be a disincentive to participation by non-insiders, which would be bad because it would reduce the amount of capital the…

The problem with insider trading in prediction markets isn't the "prediction" part, it's the "markets" part. Once there is real money changing hands, then the purpose of the prediction market stops being "surface information" and starts being "make money" (POSIWID sense of purpose). Since the money changing hands is a necessary incentive for the insiders to provide the information, the parts cannot be disentangled and the problem is fundamental.

Note also that prediction markets can't be too different from financial markets because prediction markets are in some sense a generalization of financial markets e.g. you can make a prediction market that predicts the price of some stock on some day.

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#257

Post by airstrike »

austhrow743 wrote: post #252
airstrike wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people are insider trading so blatantly, there's no "more accurate information" here until it's too late and it's already news. You're just getting scammed

What do you mean "it's already news"? As in it's already happened? I don't understand why insider trading would only happen as something becomes news. The inside knowledge haver is risking the information leaking some other way before they make their bet. Some very risk averse insider traders (lol?) may do so, but others are going to make their bets when they learn their information. Assuming that they don't though,…

I'm not saying insider trading would happen only as something becomes news. I'm saying you, as the outsider, doesn't find anything out until very close to the prediction materializing. That information provided to you by the insider comes very close to the event happening, because that's how the insider minimizes the risk that the event unfolds differently from their bet.

> People working with non-insider knowledge are still going to be betting against each other before that point. They are still going to establish a likelihood of a thing happening that's more accurate than I would by myself.

How is this useful information at all? Other than to sate your curiosity and undiagnosed gambling problem.

Price discovery in capital markets is useful because, well, there is no other way to discover price. By definition, the price of an asset is what someone is willing to pay for it.

Event discovery in prediction markets is throwing your money away hoping you guessed right, despite the fact that the biggest markets have insiders who are always going to outperform you. It's a sucker's game.

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#258

Post by munksbeer »

slg wrote: post #100

Say whatever you want about the merits of prediction markets. But I just don't see a way those benefits outweigh the societal dangers of these constant reminders that people in or close to power can freely profit from their positions in the ways the rest of the population can't. There's always talk about the dangers of disincentivizing job creators, but what happens when a society routinely disincentives job havers i…

> That's not healthy on an individual level or cumulatively at a societal level.

No it isn't. When this sets in, it becomes insidious and distorts the entire system.

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#259

Post by MadnessASAP »

wallst07 wrote: post #229
MadnessASAP wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the examples where it's good has a name "insurance". It exists, it's generally well regulated, and is not easily exploited. The reason it works better is because in a prediction market, the person betting against you has no resources or ability to go after you for fraudulent behavior. Whereas an insurance company has both.

Nobody would insure this, and if they did, that policy would take months to be written, wouldn't cover the single probability of 1 event, etc... So you are renaming something that doesn't and won't ever exist.

And you're trying to rename unregulated gambling as something that is good for society.

Exploiting people with gambling addiction is not a reasonable replacement for insurance.

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#260

Post by crazygringo »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #226
crazygringo wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is the whole point. Prediction markets are supposed to be providing the most accurate predictions. The most accurate predictions come from insider information. Poeple complaining about insider trading on prediction markets seem to be missing the point. They're supposed to have insider trading. That's the whole idea.

If the prediction markets are supposed to have insider trading, then they should be made illegal.

Insider trading isn't inherently bad. Any wager between two people is always going to contain some informational asymmetry.

There are good reasons why insider trading illegal for publicly traded stocks.

But those reasons don't translate to prediction markets.

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