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Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets

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Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets

#61

Post by unclad5968 »

dheera wrote: post #45

Honest question: Why in all hell would you open source this? I have been making money with a bot off a statistical anomaly in prediction markets lately. There is no way in hell I will open source it or tell you what that anomaly is because I have capacity back-tested it and there are so many players in the market; if all of HN and Github start downloading and use my code it WILL cease to work. Put another way, your o…

All strategies get priced in eventually. This is basically the thesis of index funds. It's fine to make money in the interim, but that isn't everyone's goal.

Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets

#62

Post by lokar »

fooker wrote: post #52

Don’t be gullible enough to fall for this bad math. Say 70% of the time it resolves to ‘no’, you still don’t make money by blindly choosing ‘no’. Guess why? Hint: This strategy is also described with the macabre analogy: picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. Do you want to pick up pennies in front of a steamroller?

Fall for it? I think it's pretty clear the author is not trying to convince any one of anything. It's mostly a joke.

Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets

#65

Post by dheera »

slg wrote: post #54

It's interesting that this is explicitly for non-sports markets because I see no reason why this would be less applicable there. Sports betters have long talked about that the winning strategy is usually to bet the under (i.e. the no) on most bets. The over (i.e. the yes) is generally a more exciting and fun outcome which causes it to attract more betters which in turns makes that side overpriced. Like with this bot,…

Strategies like this can easily be positive EV until enough people discover it and that actually is the driving force behind efficient pricing.

Here's how the mechanism works: I find that something is statistically worth $0.70 but I am able to buy it for $0.60 and statistically sell it for $0.70 (in the average). I make $0.10 each trade on average. Until you come along, copy my strategy and change $0.60 to $0.61 to frontrun my trades. Then someone else does it for $0.62. Until the market finally reprices to $0.70 where it should be. The guy who tries $0.71 loses money and stops, and then it goes back to $0.70. It's a stable feedback loop.

There are lots of positive EV strategies lying around in these inefficient markets that Citadel hasn't (yet) descended upon. The best advice I can give is if you find one, trade the hell out of it and don't open source it or tell anyone about it, because as soon as more people run it, it will cease to be positive EV and then after that it becomes an infrastructure game.

If it's popular on Github it probably doesn't work.

If you found something that works and is paying your rent, don't put it on Github. My 2 cents.

Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets

#67

Post by chairmansteve »

suzzer99 wrote: post #31
wormpilled wrote: post #4

Basically arbitraging human imagination. People love coming up with fantastical concepts because they get attention, but the more exciting a market is, the less likely it is to actually happen. Reality is usually boring.

My general observation is that people tend to underestimate the likelihood of black swan events (covid, financial crisis) even as it's pretty obvious they're happening. And then when they do accept it, they react too far the other way and assume it's never going to end. I've had success playing the markets in these specific cases. I did fritter away a lot of my gains from the financial crisis thinking I was a genius…

I make similar bets. The SAAS "apocalypse" looks like a buying opportunity to me.

Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets

#68

Post by boothby »

dheera wrote: post #45

Honest question: Why in all hell would you open source this? I have been making money with a bot off a statistical anomaly in prediction markets lately. There is no way in hell I will open source it or tell you what that anomaly is because I have capacity back-tested it and there are so many players in the market; if all of HN and Github start downloading and use my code it WILL cease to work. Put another way, your o…

Well, it's not making money, for one.

Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets

#70

Post by Retr0id »

Someone has (had?) a bot on Manifold that does the same thing, and it is profitable: https://manifold.markets/dcxStep

(Manifold doesn't use real money, so there's more "free money" lying around waiting to be picked up than on most real-money markets)

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