[ExI] betting: was RE: Warning: contains American politics; do not read!

spike at rainier66.com spike at rainier66.com
Sat Aug 31 13:14:30 UTC 2019


Those of you who played Robin Hanson's Ideas Futures years ago may be entertained by the modern real-money incarnation of it:

https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/3633/Who-will-win-the-2020-Democratic-presidential-nomination

I have been playing it off and on for about the last few years.  So far I am net positive.  The most active trading there is about politics.  They have other stuff, but as Robin Hanson discovered 20 yrs ago, the target-rich hunting ground is still in betting with the political junkies, perhaps because people who follow this kinda thing have nothing better to do.

I made some money earlier in the cycle with this strategy: go to the meme Who will win the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination (link above) note that there 32 candidates selling for at least one cent (Predict_It only deals in integer pennies.)  Earlier in the cycle I bought up a dozen highest ranking penny stocks, 100 shares of each, so I had a dollar invested in each candidate, then put a standing sell order at 2.  Of those dozen, five sold for 2, returning 10 bucks, netting me a five dollar profit.

Currently I am still holding seven penny stocks which never sold and are unlikely to ever go to 2 cents, so I will take a bath on those, for a net loss of 2 bucks.  Some of these guys I never heard of.  John Delaney?  Chris Murphy?  Dwayne Johnson?

My Predict_It rank is Diviner, which is based on overall profit percentage.

The ideas stock market to me is intriguing for many reasons.  People there buy stock based not on who they want to win an election but rather on the probability of who they think will win an election, which is a different question.

spike






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