PredictIt thread for charlatans, lazzaroni, pickpockets, trickers, gamblers

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > PredictIt thread for charlatans, lazzaroni, pickpockets, trickers, gamblers

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

who the gently caress are these people buying booker and klobuchar

why is harris ranked first

# ¿ Oct 12, 2018 22:54

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 14:40

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

Kazak_Hstan posted:

Amy Klobuchar is really good at getting mentioned as a possible candidate for president, or cabinet nominee. It is like her single, sole talent in this life.

I just started predictit and I have a dumb question:

I have allocated all of my money into contracts, so I have a zero cash balance right now. I want to set up some orders on the shares I have to sell at $.10 higher than I bought them, however, when I try to do that, it tells me I need to add money to my account. Do I have to have a cash balance to put up a sell order for shares I own at a higher price than I paid for them? It seems like the 10% fee could come out of the money when/if the shares sell.

if it's a "linked market" (like any election one where there are 10 candidates you can bet on but only one can win) then cashing out one position can actually increase the amount you have at risk. if you buy a second contract in a market that hedges your bets (limits your maximum losses) they actually give you a credit to bet more and if you want to un-hedge your bets you need to cover that with cash

# ¿ Oct 13, 2018 00:16

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

Former DILF posted:

and why is there no option for hillary

theres no option for basta either which come the gently caress on

# ¿ Oct 13, 2018 01:02

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

Former DILF posted:

shes a tough on crime succ dem

*: tough on crime does not apply to financial fraud by future trump cabinet members

# ¿ Oct 13, 2018 01:18

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

its cute how predictit says im a level something expert because ive been positive on the majority of my bets but overall am bigly in the hole thanks to crooked hillary

# ¿ Nov 6, 2018 16:55

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

people are thinking the dems may win because compared to day-of voting, mail in ballots (which they are still counting as they arrive) come from people who work for a living and aren't going to take off time during the workday to go vote in person if they dont have to

i'd get the hell out and not try to pull a win out of it because this sort of thing will have new updated vote totals in the extreme short term with no warning, and if you don't happen to be on predictit at that exact minute you'll miss it

# ¿ Nov 9, 2018 09:46

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

bawfuls posted:

Next speaker market seems ripe for some near term waves, with news like this popping up

https://twitter.com/MEPFuller/status/1062787335245520902

Joe Kennedy is the 4th-highest-trading share, where the gently caress are people getting that idea.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2018 22:12

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

the idea is that multiple no bets are also insurance against each other. it reduces the maximum you can lose (since you can only lose on at most one of the contracts and will win money on all others) so they give you the room back to bet with.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2018 19:23

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

speaking of losing money i bailed out on "will avenatti run" when it crashed from like 60 to 20 a few days ago but was too busy to gently caress around on the internet yesterday when he came out bigly against it and the waters got muddied lmao

# ¿ Nov 16, 2018 19:24

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

there was one market of who would win the iowa straw poll in 2016 but then they canceled it because trump was going to win and they didnt want that to happen and so every no contract paid out lol

# ¿ Nov 16, 2018 21:48

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

no, predictit did the correct thing. the contracts were "will candidate x win the iowa straw poll", and the iowa straw poll was canceled, so nobody won the iowa straw poll

# ¿ Nov 16, 2018 21:56

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/1328/Who-will-win-the-2015-Iowa-Straw-Poll

# ¿ Nov 16, 2018 21:59

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

isnt the market whether he testifies? do the test answers count? i dont want to bet on whether predictit decides if it counts or not

# ¿ Nov 20, 2018 23:26

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

the "will trump testify to the special counsel" market is another time when youre betting on whether predictit will eventually decide on a technicality. which is whether the "open book test" written answers that the white house sent count as under oath

# ¿ Dec 10, 2018 04:51

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

i say swears online posted:

how do they do that without loving up the existing prices?

the prices dont necessarily have to add up to 100

they often dont because the trading fees are so high that theres no incentive to be the guy who arbitrages a million shares to get a guaranteed 1% profit

# ¿ Feb 11, 2019 22:15

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

I didn't say buying 99c guaranteed wins was a losing bet I said that arbitraging shares was a losing proposition. If I bought a share of No for every person available on the 2020 presidential winner right now I would pay $12.92 for 14 shares. I get a $13 payout assuming that one of the people there do win and they don't all resolve to no, for a guaranteed profit of 8 cents. But the gain that gets hit with Predictit's 10% vig is, at minimum (if Trump wins so all my most expensive Nos pay out), 77 cents. So now my 8 cents becomes 0.3 cents after their fees.

The prices for one Yes share for everyone on the 2020 president market add up to 119 which is why that 8 cents is lying on the table (before fees). The fees make it so I don't snap up nos on everyone until it's not profitable.

Shear Modulus has issued a correction as of 23:04 on Feb 11, 2019

# ¿ Feb 11, 2019 23:00

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

I think Lutha Martin is mad that I skimmed over the fact that in the linked markets Predictit doesn't make you put up the cash for each share you buy but instead just the cash you lose if the worst possible outcome happens. I skimmed over it because it is not relevant to this discussion.

The reason that arbitrage is not profitable to the degree one would expect is entirely due to Predictit charging their 10% tax on your GROSS winnings, not your NET winnings.

I will be happy to show my work which consisted of adding up two sets of 14 numbers, one subtraction, and one multiplication. Since Lutha Martin is apparently deeply attached to how Predictit calculates the worst-case market risk which determines I will also calculate this for him.

As of right now if I wanted to buy one share of No for every person on the 2020 President market it looks like this:

code:

1. Trump: 68
2. Harris: 87
3. Biden: 88
4. O'Rourke: 90
5. Sanders: 91
6. Klobuchar: 94
7. Warren: 95
8. Brown: 95
9. Booker: 96
10. Pence: 96
11. Gillibrand: 97
12. Haley: 97
13. Bloomberg: 98
14. Kasich: 98

Maybe Lutha Martin can check my work here but I am pretty sure the sum of those numbers is $12.90.

HOWEVER, and deep apologies to Lutha Martin for not bothering to talk about this earlier, I hope you will forgive me, in a linked market Predictit does not actually debit your account for $12.90 but instead the maximum amount you can lose when the market is resolved. In the case where you only buy Nos this maximum amount is if my most expensive No resolves to Yes. That means I lose out on the Kasich or Bloomberg contract but win on all the rest.

What happens here is that, first, Predictit adds up all the money I will win on everyone else.
Then, they subtract the money I will have to pay to cover my worst-case losses. If the total losses are greater than the winnings, they keep some cash to cover the difference.
Since Lutha Martin previously said he couldn't follow my example I will take the time to make sure everyone is following along.

Let's assume Kasich wins. Then, the profit and loss for each contract is

code:

1. Trump: +32
2. Harris: +13
3. Biden: +12
4. O'Rourke: +10
5. Sanders: +9
6. Klobuchar: +6
7. Warren: +5
8. Brown: +5
9. Booker: +4
10. Pence: +4
11. Gillibrand: +3
12. Haley: +3
13. Bloomberg: +2
14. Kasich: -98

Wow! Adding up all these numbers together, in the worst case I am guaranteed a profit of 10 cents! But not really, because Predictit is going to take 10% of EACH OF THE GAINS. So after they charge their tax the actual profit and loss for each contract would be

code:

1. Trump: +28.8
2. Harris: +11.7
3. Biden: +10.8
4. O'Rourke: +9
5. Sanders: +8.1
6. Klobuchar: +6.3
7. Warren: +4.5
8. Brown: +4.5
9. Booker: +3.6
10. Pence: +3.6
11. Gillibrand: +2.7
12. Haley: +2.7
13. Bloomberg: +1.8
14. Kasich: -98

Okay now we add all these numbers up and we get 0.1 cents. My max market risk is a tiny positive number. So, in this case, Predictit does not actually take any cash from me. I performed an arbitrage that in the worst case will still net me the princely sum of 0.1 cents per trade.

Now that that digression is over, the _best case_ for this arbitrage is when Predictit's fees eat into as little of the payout as possible. Again, since the fees are charged against GROSS winnings, that means that if I am trying to arbitrage I want my Trump contract to lose. Then, the after-fee profit and loss are

code:

1. Trump: -68
2. Harris: +11.7
3. Biden: +10.8
4. O'Rourke: +9
5. Sanders: +8.1
6. Klobuchar: +6.3
7. Warren: +4.5
8. Brown: +4.5
9. Booker: +3.6
10. Pence: +3.6
11. Gillibrand: +2.7
12. Haley: +2.7
13. Bloomberg: +1.8
14. Kasich: +1.8

Which means that your best-case winnings are 3.1 cents.

So, in the 2020 President market right now, the arbitrage trade is actually profitable. I am guaranteed to win between 0.1 and 3.1 cents (at the time I made the original post, there was not a profitable arbitrage trade in this market).

Is it worth the hassle? In my opinion, no. First, there is not always an arbitrage opportunity available. Second, Predictit caps the value of each contract you can hold to a pretty low number so you are generally limited to less than a thousand shares (probably to discourage arbitrage trading) which hard caps your profits at a few bucks. Third, Predicit charges another 5% fee on all withdrawals, which applies to both your profits and your principle. So you actually have to play Predictit for quite a while if you want to make enough small-guaranteed-money trades to overcome that tax. Finally (and this is the thing that made me decide it really wasn't worth the pain in the rear end), they don't actually let you enter into No on everyone at once but instead make you buy them one at a time which means that you have to have several hundred in cash in your account to buy a few hundred shares of one option, then they slowly credit it back as you buy the other contracts.

Since I showed my work maybe you can help me figure out how you were dunking on me when you first responding to me saying "arbitrage is not as profitable as it looks" by citing the profitability of something that is not arbitrage, then, when I gave an example of what I meant by "arbitrage," saying that people should not take advice from me (and should in fact go pile into this trade?????).

As to why in my last post I could skim over the fact that Predictit isn't going to make me put up the actual in this instance, that's because I could just take the $12.90 number earlier, say "oh look a free 10 cents," then multiply each of the gross profits by 90% to show that even the best-case scenario, the maximum after-fee profit is not 10 cents but actually far lower. Again, that is because Predictit charges fees on your GROSS profits.

PS. While I was writing this the market price for Harris No went up one cent to 88 which made the range of after-fee winnings go to -0.8 to 2.2 cents. No longer an arbitrage opportunity.

CassandraZara posted:

I guess I don't know why I'm wading into what is obviously just a forums grudge but here goes anyway

If it is a forums grudge it's news to me because I've never interacted with this person before. They just seem like a prick.

Lutha Mahtin posted:

i wouldn't say it's a forums grudge so much as some of the people who post in this thread failing to understand the math of how predictit works? market risk calculations work exactly according to PI's published explanations about how the fee system and the rules for linked markets work. thus it doesn't make sense to me that multiple people in this thread are mad because they failed to consider how the fee system would impact the strategy of achieving negative risk in a linked market

i will note that i have achieved negative risk, even after accounting for fees, in linked markets. it really isn't that hard if you math it out ahead of time. but i will also say that unless you are completely desperate for a slightly larger bankroll right this instant, it's really not the best strategy, because it effectively locks you out of participating further in the market where you achieved the negative risk

But I didn't misunderstand how the math behind it works? Unless you would be so kind as to point out the error in my and CassandraZara's posts where we say that the apparent topline arbitrage is eaten up by Predictit's fees.

Shear Modulus has issued a correction as of 02:40 on Feb 13, 2019

# ¿ Feb 13, 2019 02:30

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

Lutha Mahtin posted:

man if this is the level of the average PI player i should really start trading again

Are you just going to be an rear end or are you going to contribute to the discussion sometime

Shear Modulus has issued a correction as of 04:40 on Feb 13, 2019

# ¿ Feb 13, 2019 04:25

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

Merlot Brougham posted:

From the little digging I did before I cashed out (for a few bucks playing swings on No), the filing fee in Alabama is $2500. The petiton requirements are either 500 sigs statewide, or 50 sigs from each of the 7 congressional districts. Those are expensive signatures if he paid 2500 for them.

to bloomberg 50 bucks a signature is like 0.01 cents per signature to you or me

# ¿ Nov 9, 2019 02:00

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

bloomberg is spending so much money on his campaign already that him allocating a hundred grand on keeping his prediction market price high so that tv talking heads keep saying "well his polling may he poo poo but the prediction markets remain bullish on bloomberg" would be a rounding error. hell he could probably do it for the price of one of his seemingly hundreds of 30-second ads on primetime football games

Shear Modulus has issued a correction as of 03:06 on Dec 2, 2019

# ¿ Dec 1, 2019 23:53

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

if only i had thought of predictit when he had his heart attack and went all in

# ¿ Dec 10, 2019 06:10

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

The Joe Man posted:

If I had only had the cash at the time.....

poo poo 15c is still pretty cheap

# ¿ Dec 10, 2019 07:05

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

Merlot Brougham posted:

Predictit Thread: I've been owned big time.

should've just bet on bernie

# ¿ Jan 11, 2020 01:28

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

Jewel Repetition posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oWpXB-dRAA

the predictit rules dont say the market will settle based on who the math says will have the most SDEs but rather who the iowa democratic party declares has the most SDEs

# ¿ Feb 7, 2020 21:29

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

kasich also had nonzero numbers for winning in early 2016

# ¿ Feb 8, 2020 01:25

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

only a real gambler would bet against klobmentum

# ¿ Feb 11, 2020 00:43

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

Tunicate posted:

he could just be buying them up himself to help build a narrative, how much would it cost to do that?

a piddly amount compared to how much he's spending on tv ads

# ¿ Feb 13, 2020 06:35

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

there were definitely one or more people on intrade (which was basically predictit before predictit) in 2012 buying up a shitload of "romney wins the presidential election" in the last couple of weeks before election day to push his price up when everyone else knew he had no chance

e: here's an article about it
https://slate.com/news-and-politics...-could-win.html

quote:

A new academic paper suggests that during the home stretch of the 2012 presidential election a single trader lost between $4 million and $7 million placing Intrade bets on Mitt Romney�most likely in a bid to make the presidential race appear closer than it really was.

The paper from Columbia University�s Rajiv Sethi and Microsoft Research�s David Rothschild found that the single anonymous trader accounted for about one-third of all bets made on Romney during the final two weeks of the campaign. So, regardless of motivation, it�s clear the trader played an out-sized role in determining an Intrade line that was all too often used by pundits and political journalists to suggest the presidential race remained a toss-up until the very end.

Shear Modulus has issued a correction as of 00:04 on Feb 14, 2020

# ¿ Feb 14, 2020 00:00

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

WampaLord posted:

It's just a bit annoying that Bloomberg No still isn't a huge return and you're gonna have to wait forever to get your money out from it because of this pumping.

But it's free money.

Do you think he'll tank in price when he comes out on the debate stage and America collectively realizes he's short? I know Trump is tweeting about it all the time but the visual comparison is really gonna be something else.

he'll wear like 5 inch lifts

# ¿ Feb 14, 2020 03:40

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

WampaLord posted:

I done got hosed on the billionaire mentions market and am currently getting hosed on the Warren drop out before Super Tuesday market because now the narrative is that she's surging

god drat it, good night for Bernie but bad night for my money

big mistake on betting on anything but bernie

a lesson i learned when crooked hillary lost my entire predictit bankroll on 11/9

# ¿ Feb 20, 2020 06:47

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

How much profit do you have to win before you can come out positive after Predictit takes their cut?

# ¿ Oct 27, 2020 20:15

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

weekly font posted:

Pumped some more money in on REPUBLICAN NO to take the House. I thought all the MAGA Money went to Iraqi Dinars.

What's everyone's election night strategy? Somehow I managed to break almost even last year despite not expecting the TRUMPWAVE at all by just moving some money around states frantically as the night went on.

In 2016 on election night I doubled down on Hillary and lost like an extra hundred bucks lol

# ¿ Oct 28, 2020 16:36

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

canyonero posted:

I just don't understand some of the bets. PA isn't a toss-up, but fine, mayyyybe Trump wins there. Why on earth are chuds putting money on GOP winning the house? Is there even a single poll that shows that's even in the realm of possibility? Or is just like when people playing fantasy football draft players from their favorite team because they have a good feeling?

Once you unskew the polls yeah.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2020 16:38

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

comedyblissoption posted:

eric_andre_let_me_in.mp4

lol predictit crashes and doesnt let you trade every election its like clockwork

# ¿ Nov 4, 2020 04:39

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

Grey Fox posted:

https://twitter.com/PredictIt/status/1692564579757208008

lol trump isn't going to pick tim scott, these people are nuts

# ¿ Aug 18, 2023 16:57

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

aw, predictit wants my drivers license before i can gamble money again

# ¿ Aug 23, 2023 19:42

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

Gucci Loafers posted:

On another topic, Trump is at 40 points for the 2024 US Pres Election. And it's still trending up. I honestly don't get how it's that high and the trend.

probably cuz he's leading biden in the polls

# ¿ Dec 2, 2023 05:45

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 14:40

Shear Modulus: Jun 9, 2010

The real reason the DNC is taking the first primary away from new hampshire is because they voted for Bernie

# ¿ Jan 16, 2024 19:37

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