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For those watching the Presidential election, things have been looking very bad for Kamala lately, with national polls tightening, and Trump ahead in several key states. Although it remains too close to call, Trump's odds have shot up to 57% according to Polymarket.
Harris's 1.4% lead in national polls is cold comfort given that, at a similar point in the election, Biden was up by 9.4% and Clinton was up by 6.7%.
Democratics are panicking about Trump's support in the black community, which has traditionally voted 90/10 in favor of Democrats. While Trump will still lose the black vote by large margins, his style is more appealing to black voters (especially men) then previous Republican candidates like Mitt Romney. Democrats have responded by trying to shame black voters. Recently, Barack Obama was even unearthed to chastise black men for not wanting to vote for Harris.
Enter the latest vote-buying scheme, which I think is the most naked attempt to buy votes I've ever seen in recent US politics, even more than college debt forgiveness.
https://x.com/KamalaHarris/status/1845993766441644386
Harris-Walz have proposed a 20k forgiveable loan for up to 1 million Black (capital B) entrepreneurs to start a business. The fact that the loan is forgiveable means that this is essentially a gift to any grifter who wants to take advantage. But most importantly, it's explicit racial discrimination against the 86% of the country who isn't black.
Personally, I think this appeal is likely to backfire as most swing voters are sick of handouts to people who aren't them.
Will Trump counter with some asinine scheme of his own? Probably.
I can't speak to Polymarket, but I was watching Predictit pretty closely. I saw a surge in market activity about a week ago with Trump moving from $0.49 to $0.56 and Harris dropping from $0.55 to as low as $0.48. I predicted this was a pump-and-dump and that the prices would inevitably settle back to $0.50-ish (there's not really enough volume to to totally wipe the pump, IMO). I missed the $0.48 shares for Harris, but she's back up to $0.51 and Trump is back down to $0.53. Had I taken the Trump short and gotten in at the Harris Lows I could have made $6 for every $100. Not huge, but basically proves my point that these market moves are opportunities for scalping and the race is strictly 50/50...at least for now.
This theory doesn't work unfortunately. PredictIt is not a real market. Betters are limited to $850 per contract. Also, to buy shares in both Kamala and Donald would cost you $1.06 right now. On Polymarket you can own both for $0.998.
So your 6% profit all gets eaten by transaction costs. And it's not possible to buy more than $850, so it's also impossible for a single whale to pump and dump. Polymarket is a liquid prediction market. PredictIt, on the other hand, is just a toy. That explains the weird behavior you are seeing.
If you are confident that Kamala has a greater than 41.7% chance of winning you can go on Polymarket right now and make real money.
My point is this wasn't the case a few days ago. I could have bought Harris at $0.48 and sold Trump at $0.56 (aka buy 'No' at $0.44). Selling at market today would have been profit.
As for pump and dump, I think these markets are so thin that $850 would look like a pump and there's no reason to think, if it was a pump, that there was only a single individual involved. Volume doubled for a three day stretch, so something was happening and it was unlikely a single person.
I'm not confident in anyone winning anything...again, my point. I think the actual price per contract should be $0.50.
I'm also not trying to make 'real money' on prediction markets. I don't really understand who would do that...but w/e. What I'm interested in is how that market functions and how closely my predictions skew toward reality. Though, with your suggestion, I may take a closer look at Polymarket.
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