Posted on 11/02/2020 8:06:23 AM PST by spacejunkie2001
Anyone playing around with PredictIt for the election? It's fun to throw a few bucks at and watch what happens. I know just enough to be dangerous! LOL I bet on several long shot races that I feel will pay off, including +3 net senate seats, winning WI, MI, MN, PA. Made tiny bets on NJ & NY. I'm up a few bucks right now and don't plan on selling, just closing out when the election is over.
are you just planning on letting the election close out and get paid when you win or are you going to actively try to sell your shares?
“Anyone playing around with PredictIt for the election? “
me. i cleared $6,000 after fees and taxes in 2016 PredictIt markets betting on Trump in 2016 ... odds were in the range 2-1 to 3-1 against Trump then, which was amazingly stupid odds and made it easy to win big without risk of big loss ...
odds are not as good this year though, only 3-2 against Trump right now ... still, for 2020, i’ve got several market bets on Trump to win in all of it’s many different all-for-practical-purposes idential markets, as well as several individual states ... couldn’t bet as much as i wanted, so i set up Mrs. Catnipman an account and staked her market bets too ...
one strange thing about the odds though right now, is that they haven’t reacted a single iota to the steady drumbeat of polls in the various swing states that are shifting in trump’s favor, as well as early indications of bad news for Dem turnout and good news for GOP turnout in various locales, plus the whole hunter laptop scandal, and i’ve been trying to figure out why ... the odds in 2016 were equally out of whack ...
so, why are the betting odds seemingly so out of whack?
predictit.org is a legal marketplace “betting” site that’s an academic experiment at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, and what i’ve decided is that it attracts a substantial number of marketplace bettors from NZ, Australia and Europe, ALL of which have even more slanted “news” than the U.S., and the fools that are betting there are betting based on VERY limited and HIGHLY biased information compared to what FReepers have available to us ... thus i consider those of us in the U.S. who ignore the fake polls and intensely study a large variety of sources outside the mainstream have a leg up on the average ignorant bettor at predictit.org ...
at any rate, here’s some explanations i’ve posted to FReepers in the past about how to “bet” the predicit marketplaces:
fundamentally, the whole thing is much like buying and selling shares of stock that always have a face value of $1.00. you always get $1.00 back per share IF you win (if you lose, you get nothing back), so if you buy shares at 65¢ and you win, your profit will be 35¢/share (less fees and eventually taxes, as they’ll send you a 1099 form for gambling winnings or losses)
Basically, what you’re doing is that you’re always buying $1.00 shares at a discount. Most markets are usually buy/sell YES and NO shares, so you’re buying or selling either YES shares or NO shares, but in all cases shares are worth a dollar IF YOU win no matter what you pay.
IF you win, you’ll always get back $1.00 for each share you bought no matter what, and your personal profit will be the difference between the $1.00 you get back minus what you paid for the share, so the main thing to keep in mind is that you always get back a dollar IF you win, no matter how much you paid for the share.
Which also basically means it’s hardly worthwhile to bet on sure winners if, for example, you have to pay .99 cents a share ... in fact, you would ultimately lose money because predictit.org takes 10% of your profit and 5% of any amount you ultimately have them send you back, though they take NO fees up front.
To actually buy shares (bet):
1. You’ll need to establish an account with predictit.com
2. After you establish your account (loginID, password, name, address, etc.), you then to FUND your account with the amount you want to buy shares with by depositing money in your account paid for with your credit card. (Basically, you don’t want to deposit more money than you’re planning on betting at the time because they take 5% when you withdraw money from the account, so if you want to buy additional shares, then simply deposit more funds.)
3. In our case, you’ll (presumably) want to buy YES shares for Trump to win. (there’s also several essentially identical markets, such as which party will win the Presidency, will there be a female VP, etc.)
4. Divide the best offer that others are willing to sell you YES shares for by the amount you deposited, and then fill in the nearest whole number of shares you can pay for from your deposited funds after you click “BUY YES”
5. Once you’ve bought shares, you can actually sell them at any time, taking a loss or a profit, depending on how the market moved after your purchase. I plan to hold my shares until the end for maximum profit (or loss).
6. Also, note that there are multiple nearly identical markets in some cases , such as which party will win the Presidency, will the VP be female, etc., which is useful for anyone wanting to bet more than the maximum allowed per person per market ($850.00/market).
7. Bottom line, it IS confusing! And not being a gambler and having zero past experience in betting before 2016, I studied the whole setup very carefully for at least three days before attempting to bet. It’s also a good idea to study this FAQ:
https://www.predictit.org/support/faq
I plan to start partially selling shares as the day pans out tomorrow. I’m sure there will be sellers who start panicking as they realize everything’s tilting Trumps way. Going to do it in 100 share batches as the price starts going up during the day to lock in some profits. Depending how that goes, i may be out of the whole thing by the time the election gets called. Right now, every penny each market goes up is $20 in my pocket, and I’m just under $300 ahead. If I can sell ALL my shares, my payout will be anywhere from $2,000 to $6,000. Just depends on my level of anxiety! HAHA! Trading isn’t for the faint of heart, whether it’s stocks, commodities or stuff like this.
That was VERY helpful! Thanks so much. I bet on what the market considers long shots but I don’t so I see me making decent money in the end. Now that I have a clearer picture of how it works, and your email, I’ll be a bit bolder, and earlier, next time :)
Good luck catnip!
“I found it too late to get in on the actual Biden or Trump win.”
i don’t think it is ... they don’t close any of the markets until they’ve decided the outcome and the payout ...
HOWEVER, i JUST got this email from predicit.org a few minutes ago:
We are expecting very heavy trading during the Nov. 3 election period.
PredictIt is continually updating and improving the site to enhance your trading experience. We’ve made upgrades over the past year in an effort to improve the speed at which trades are processed during peak periods.
Nonetheless, while we continue to make adjustments to handle the expected increase in traffic, here are some things that you need to know to help you plan accordingly for this upcoming period:
Offers are processed in the order in which they are received. This means that an offer you submit when a certain price is showing may not be filled at that price (or at all) because of all the offers already submitted ahead of yours. Do not resubmit offers that are already in process.
When trading volume on a particular market is especially heavy, we may post a notice at the top of market pages advising you to expect longer than normal processing times.
PredictIt may suspend trading in some markets earlier than expected when necessary to maintain the integrity/functionality of the site.
Your patience throughout this period will be greatly appreciated.
Also, an important reminder to all PredictIt users: Bot trading and automatically scraping data from the site not only can cause a slowdown for all users, but also violate the Terms of Service. This can result in immediate suspension of your account.
Finally, trading will suspend for regularly scheduled nightly maintenance from 4 a.m. to 5 a.m. ET. Please plan accordingly.
We hope this information is helpful. As always, if you have any questions, please contact support@predictit.org.
Thank you,
PredictIt Support
support@predictit.org
Waiting until the election closes. Right now still appears many of the bettors are still expecting Biden/Dems to do well. How about you?
“I plan to start partially selling shares as the day pans out tomorrow.” etc.
in 2016, i waited until the marketplace closed and paid out to extract every penny of my victory, but the assholes who ran the whole deal REALLY DID NOT WANT TO DECLARE TRUMP THE WINNER, so they waited until practically the day he was inaugurated to declare him the winner, so your early selling strategy solves that little issue too ...
yes, waiting for it to close. I’m only up about $10 on $100 but I think many of my bets are winners :)
If you place a bid on that outcome they come up with a disclaimer that says that that bidding forum is filled up...........
“If you place a bid on that outcome they come up with a disclaimer that says that that bidding forum is filled up”
got it ... they must have a limit on the total number of participants per market, just like there’s a limit on the max total bet per market,namely $850.00 ... also, i think the total number of shares per market is one million ...
I bought 2500 shares of “NOT BIDEN” at $0.33 each.
Cheaper than a “YES TRUMP” bet and covered Biden dropping out.
If you think that Trump is going to win Michigan, which I do, then you might want to buy John James shares which are currently trading at about $.28.........
Thanks for the heads up. Good to know. Just got an email from them about heavy volume tomorrow, first come first serve trades. Hope the system keeps up!
“If you think that Trump is going to win Michigan, which I do, then you might want to buy John James shares which are currently trading at about $.28”
interesting bet ... i did already bet max some time ago that trump would win michigan ...
Well, how about that! The system is NOT keeping up. Kinda hard to trade when you can’t access your account. Hmpf!
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