The Wolves of K Street
For gamblers looking for an edge, PredictIt turns politics into something more than a cynical battleground. Meet the people making bank on our nightmarish election cycle.
By David Hill Mar 21, 2018, 6:20am EDT
theringer.com
( Wanna know how to short Donald Trump? This is one way! )
excerpt:
..PredictIt is a real-money political prediction market based in D.C. and sponsored by Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. PredictIt operates as a kind of “stock market for politics,” and is used to study the efficacy and value of markets in predicting future outcomes. The site was launched in 2014 not long after the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission shut down a different prediction market, Intrade. Intrade was popular, but accepted bets on more than just political events, including the weather and the price of gold, which the CFTC considered a commodity future. PredictIt, however, had the approval of the CFTC to operate because the site’s work was for “academic research purposes only,” and because PredictIt had agreed to offer contracts on only political events and limit the amount that could be invested in a single contract to $850.
A PredictIt contract is essentially a bet. Each contract is a typical proposition bet between two people that an event will or won’t happen, only in this case the bet is structured like a futures contract. Traders can purchase “yes” or “no” shares in any given question. For every “yes” contract, there is another trader holding “no.” Traders can offer their shares for sale on the market at any price they wish. At the resolution of the event, the winners are each paid $1 per share. The losers’ shares are worth nothing. Throughout trading, prices will fluctuate depending on demand. A number of researchers believe that this type of market-based approach provides more reliable data than things like opinion polls or even expert opinions. PredictIt shares its data with professors at more than 50 universities, including Harvard and Yale...
Place your bets HERE:
https://www.predictit.org/ |
