Coming Attractions
I do not know what you animals think, but I personally feel like the months since Super Tuesday have been a less creative epoch in political gambling than the 90s were for fashion. There used to be a time where we could bet on what politicians would say in speeches (mention markets), how they would vote in Congress (legislative markets) and whether or not they would take a speed ball during Hannity and go absolutely ape by firing-off 50+ tweets (Trump tweet markets). Now we are basically left in a world of political gambling where the only stuff to bet on is who will win elections and who Biden’s VP will be.
I have a few problems with this. The biggest one is that betting on the November election doesn’t always make financial sense, due to the fact that it is not, by definition, until November. So I really don’t want my bankroll collecting dust there if it doesn’t have to. This is probably one of the reasons why there has been more money washing through the PredictIt market on Joe Biden’s VP choice than the Cayman Islands. But recently I have been building some positions in markets that I think are going to be the next big thing. I am talking about bets that I predict will have huge volume and swings to play as we get deeper into election season.
The first one is the CLOSEST SENATE RACE market.
I like this market because it is a classic headline market, where one news story could cause any of these to pump irrationally. I caught a little bit of a pump this week because I’ve been holding Joni Ernst in Iowa as the tightest race. I’ll get into this in the next section, but I have been saying for months that I think that the Republican senate majority is in deeper trouble than traders think; and I’ve been saying for weeks that I think Trump is probably going to lose worse in November of 2020 than the Denver Broncos did in February of 2014:
Because of this, I’ve been assuming for a while that the senate races that are supposed to be close — Arizona, Colorado, and Michigan are either going to be blowouts (AZ, CO) or easy holds (MI) for the Democrats. Curiously, I still have a long position on Susan Collins in Maine, which I’ll have to sort out soon. She sorta feels like a gonner to me. The gist of my strategy is to pick discounted shares lower on the list and hope to get lucky. I doubt John Cornyn will lose in Texas, or Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, but I’ll buy longs on their seats if the price is right (<4 cents). Kentucky and Montana feel overpriced to me at 11 cents but I am seriously kicking myself for not getting into those sooner. Dumb liberal people on PredictIt enjoy betting against Mitch McConnell just as much as the boneheaded MAGA freaks love betting for Trump.
Unfortunately, for the time being, this market is overheated. Check back in a few weeks when the current climate starts to shift back to a more normal moment.
Electoral College Margin of Victory
All the pros are scouring for deals on this market. Tbh, I have no idea what the final tally will be but if you have been paying attention, I’ve been warning for a while that Trump has completely lost control of this election and is regularly acting the way Kanye West does right before he deletes his Twitter profile and checks into a mental health clinic.
However, if you slide over to 270 to Win and start filling out maps, you’ll realize that Trump losing by 100 points is probably just the starting point. Honestly, Biden +150 is probably the starting point. So again, with lots of time between now and the election, I am just looking for cheap ways to buy shares that could conceivably fall inside the winning bracket. I don’t know the right answer, but the right sequence of headlines over the next few months will pump a lot of these brackets that anticipate Trump getting wrekt.
Sadly, once again, this market is a little picked-over at the moment. I’m going to wait before I buy any more.
KEENDAWG.
