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birb_cromble  3d ago (text post)   521 thread views

Weekly Finance Thread - 2027-07-04

A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.

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Is making consistent money on Kalshi/polymarket plausible for mottizens? I'm up about 40% on Kalshi/polymarket after 9 worldcup games and I want to know if I can make this a decent side hustle or if I'm going to lose all my money and be made fun of for thinking I could gamble in income. After worldcup will it work on other sports? What about crypto?

The betting market on top tier Soccer games is very very very efficient. The sheer liquidity sunk into Kalshi/Polymarket has provided some EV spots this tournament where weight of public money has adjusted things past expectations, but if you're actively taking prices on Soccer based on your own opinions and not arbitrage you are probably gonna blow up in the medium-term at the latest.

I'm profitable on top tier soccer betting over a decade or so. Only slightly though. But around +25% ROI during this world cup. The trick is to just do nothing in all the cases where you don't have your edge.

How is the volatility and total return compared to just investing it in some broad market fund like VT? Is it worth the effort, or is this more of a "hobby that makes money" thing?

Not an investment at all. It's just for fun + testing my instincts. It adds some spice to the games I watch. Sometimes you just 'know', if you've watched the team(s) many times. It has some transfer value to stock picking. There are never any 100% things there either, but the edge in either field consists of identifying when there's a higher chance of A happening than B. And trusting yourself enough to follow that signal by placing enough money on it. In sports betting you can use an implied odds calculator to see whether the probability implied by the odds is higher or lower than the probability you think you've identified. Positive expected value = green light.

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This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

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Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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