Booms and Busts
Joe Biden has finally made a comeback on PredictIt. Now that people actually believe that Biden is more than a dementia patient who just yells into a microphone about accomplishments he had in the last century, his share values have moved him into favorite status in most of the Southern states and he has seriously popped in machine states like Illinois (told ya so!) and home state-adjacent Pennsylvania.
My first thought is — should I start betting on Bernie again? This is due to the fact that Joe Biden is probably not as strong of a favorite in all of these states as the new odds on PredictIt say. I mean we have not even seen a post-Nevada poll in PA or Arkansas and we are basically flying blind in Tennessee. However, I am trying to learn from my mistakes. Just because I have a blog that is the #1 website on the internet* does not mean I am perfect.
*possibly fake news
And the biggest whiff I have made this race is over-reacting. For example, a lot of you animals absolutely water boarded me for immediately shorting Bernie Sanders in places like Texas, Alabama, and Arkansas when his YES prices tipped-into the 30s. I did the same thing when Elizabeth Warren was hotter on PredictIt this fall than the Tamagochi was in the ’90s.
I opened short positions on her at around 33 cents and had to sweat for months as she hit 60/40 odds to win the Dem Nomination and most states. I have honestly never been hated on more than when I posted this meme of me just going ape on Warren shorts:
This was absolutely the right strategy; but I executed it too early to net big returns. Tbh, I easily spent more dough on Xanax to numb my pain while I was sweating these positions than I made from flipping them.
Let me get real: these boom and bust cycles are longer than they should be. It is pretty much a guarantee that PredictIt traders will act like farm animals and just keep buying into over-hyped candidates for way longer than they should. And tbh, my track record shorting fake news candidates isn’t much better. I tend to make the right call, but too early to actually benefit.
All of this is way more important now that this primary is set up against a seriously urgent timeline. Super Tuesday is five days away. And I can guarantee you that sh*t will happen. But if you’re trading for value — you know, trying to squeeze a dime’s worth of price advantage out of some Bernie longs in Missouri, or some Biden shorts in South Carolina (80/20, yikes!) — there is a higher chance than ever that you are going to get hosed if the market turns against you. I mean, how many more panic sales are left?
So I am going to chill out and watch Cops today instead of trading. It’s probably a good idea to only gamble on winners at this point. But IDK if you have some titanium cans slapping between your legs, you could still make serious dough if you time the changing of the wind.
KEENDAWG.
