It seems the pro-Trump Polymarket whale may have had a real edge after all. Wall Street Journal reports (paywalled link, screenshot) that he’s a former professional trader, who commissioned his own polls from a major polling firm using an alternate methodology—the neighbor method, i.e. asking respondents who they expect their neighbors will vote for—he thought would be less biased by preference falsification.
I didn’t bet against him, though I strongly considered it; feeling glad this morning that I didn’t.
I don’t remember anyone proposing “maybe this trader has an edge”, even though incentivising such people to trade is the mechanism by which prediction markets work. Certainly I didn’t, and in retrospect it feels like a failure not to have had ‘the multi-million dollar trader might be smart money’ as a hypothesis at all.
I can proudly say that though I disparaged the guy in private, I not once put my money where my mouth was, which means outside observers can infer that all along I secretly agreed with his analysis of the situation.
Knowing now that he had an edge, I feel like his execution strategy was suspect. The Polymarket prices went from 66c during the order back to 57c on the 5 days before the election. He could have extracted a bit more money from the market if he had forecasted the volume correctly and traded against it proportionally.
It seems the pro-Trump Polymarket whale may have had a real edge after all. Wall Street Journal reports (paywalled link, screenshot) that he’s a former professional trader, who commissioned his own polls from a major polling firm using an alternate methodology—the neighbor method, i.e. asking respondents who they expect their neighbors will vote for—he thought would be less biased by preference falsification.
I didn’t bet against him, though I strongly considered it; feeling glad this morning that I didn’t.
I don’t remember anyone proposing “maybe this trader has an edge”, even though incentivising such people to trade is the mechanism by which prediction markets work. Certainly I didn’t, and in retrospect it feels like a failure not to have had ‘the multi-million dollar trader might be smart money’ as a hypothesis at all.
I can proudly say that though I disparaged the guy in private, I not once put my money where my mouth was, which means outside observers can infer that all along I secretly agreed with his analysis of the situation.
Yes. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tDkYdyJSqe3DddtK4/alexander-gietelink-oldenziel-s-shortform?commentId=JqDaYkRyw2WSAZLDg
Knowing now that he had an edge, I feel like his execution strategy was suspect. The Polymarket prices went from 66c during the order back to 57c on the 5 days before the election. He could have extracted a bit more money from the market if he had forecasted the volume correctly and traded against it proportionally.
Wow, tough crowd