Clever, but it hasn’t been tried for a good reason. If, say, the next five years of markets are all untethered from reality (but consistent with each other), there’s no way to get paid for bringing them into line with expected reality except by putting on the trades and holding them for five years. (The natural one-year trade will just resolve to the unfair market price of the next-year-market market and there’s nothing to do about it except wait for longer.)
The chained markets end up being no more fair than if they all settled to the final expiry directly.
Yes, I can imagine cases where this setup wouldn’t be enough.
Though note that you could still buy the shares the last year. Also, if the market corrects by 10% each year (i.e., a value of a share of yes increases from 10 to 20% to 30% to 40%, etc. each year), it might still be worth it (note that the market would resolve each year to the value of a share, not to 0 or 100).
Also note that the current way in which prediction markets are structured is, as you point out, dumb: you bet 5 depreciating dollars which then go into escrow, rather than $5 worth of, say, S&P 500 shares, which increase in value. But this could change.
Clever, but it hasn’t been tried for a good reason. If, say, the next five years of markets are all untethered from reality (but consistent with each other), there’s no way to get paid for bringing them into line with expected reality except by putting on the trades and holding them for five years. (The natural one-year trade will just resolve to the unfair market price of the next-year-market market and there’s nothing to do about it except wait for longer.)
The chained markets end up being no more fair than if they all settled to the final expiry directly.
Yes, I can imagine cases where this setup wouldn’t be enough.
Though note that you could still buy the shares the last year. Also, if the market corrects by 10% each year (i.e., a value of a share of yes increases from 10 to 20% to 30% to 40%, etc. each year), it might still be worth it (note that the market would resolve each year to the value of a share, not to 0 or 100).
Also note that the current way in which prediction markets are structured is, as you point out, dumb: you bet 5 depreciating dollars which then go into escrow, rather than $5 worth of, say, S&P 500 shares, which increase in value. But this could change.