I disagree with “He seems to have no inside information.” He presented himself as having no inside information, but that’s presumably how he would have presented himself regardless of whether he had inside information or not. It’s not like he needed to convince others that he knows what he’s doing, like how in the stock market you want to buy then pump then sell. This is different—it’s a market that’s about to resolve. The smart play from his perspective would be to aggressively trash-talk his own competence, to lower the price in case he wants to buy more.
Yes, this is possible. It smells a bit of 4d-chess. As far as I can tell he already had finalized his position by the time the WSJ interview came out.
I’ve dug a little deeper and it seems he did do a bunch of research on polling data. I was a bit too rash to say he had no inside information whatsoever. Plausibly he had some. The degree of the inside information he would need is very high. It seems he did a similar Kelly bet calculation since he report his all-things-considered probability to be 80-90%:
“With so much money on the line, Théo said he is feeling nervous, though he believes Trump has an 80%-90% chance to win the election.
“A surprise can always occur,” Théo told The Journal.”
I have difficulty believing one can get this kind of certainty for all-things-considered-probability for something as noisy and tight as US presidential election. [but he won both the electoral college and popular vote bet]
I disagree with “He seems to have no inside information.” He presented himself as having no inside information, but that’s presumably how he would have presented himself regardless of whether he had inside information or not. It’s not like he needed to convince others that he knows what he’s doing, like how in the stock market you want to buy then pump then sell. This is different—it’s a market that’s about to resolve. The smart play from his perspective would be to aggressively trash-talk his own competence, to lower the price in case he wants to buy more.
Yes, this is possible. It smells a bit of 4d-chess. As far as I can tell he already had finalized his position by the time the WSJ interview came out.
I’ve dug a little deeper and it seems he did do a bunch of research on polling data. I was a bit too rash to say he had no inside information whatsoever. Plausibly he had some. The degree of the inside information he would need is very high. It seems he did a similar Kelly bet calculation since he report his all-things-considered probability to be 80-90%:
“With so much money on the line, Théo said he is feeling nervous, though he believes Trump has an 80%-90% chance to win the election.
“A surprise can always occur,” Théo told The Journal.”
I have difficulty believing one can get this kind of certainty for all-things-considered-probability for something as noisy and tight as US presidential election. [but he won both the electoral college and popular vote bet]