Replies

“I dont understand what 65 cent bidon to 40 cents DJT means. If i buy what i guess is a share of 40 cents DJT and he wins, whats the return? Thanks in advance for any input.”

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¢, if 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)

the whole thing is much like buying and selling shares of stock that always have a face value of $1.00.

i wrote the following to another FReeper a while back:

Basically, what you’re doing is that you’re always buying $1.00 shares at a discount. Most markets are usually YES/NO shares, so you’re buying and 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.

To actually place a bet (buy shares):

1. You’ll need to establish an account with predictit.com

2. After you establish your account (loginID, password, name, address, etc.), you then FUND the account with the amount you want to bet by depositing money in the 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, so if you want to bet again, then simply deposit more funds.)

3. In your case, you’ll want to buy YES shares for Trump to win.

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 be more than the maximum per market.

7. Bottom line, it IS confusing! And not being a gambler and having zero past experience in betting, 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