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Notes -
Yes put prices would be a good indicator. And a big reason why you know polymarket market isn’t legitimate or sized. It’s not that 13% isn’t a great return - you could actually easily arb it with index puts. Bet no at 13% and buy a certain amount of index puts with the 13%. Cross collateralize them.
If a pandemic occurs again
More generally, is Polymarket still a reliable indicator of anything at this point? Between direct observations/experiences and a number of high-profile stories about insiders manipulating data sources like ISW, I get the sense that you have to put a nontrivial probability that any market outcome will be determined by shenanigans (of the "the person controlling the obscure WHO website deep link that will be used for resolving is betting too, and nobody will punish him for changing it for 10 minutes" type, or the "a small group of power users knows that on Polymarket 'pandemic' is taken to mean any disease discussed by Andrew Fauci on TV while wearing a pink tie" type) rather than anything resembling a plain interpretation of its subject.
Accordingly, 13% on pandemic could easily be dominated by a signal like "small group of users in the know sees that an account representing resolution manipulators is betting yes, and betting according to their expectation that the market will be successfully manipulated to yes".
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