Why Almost Everyone Loses–Except a Few Sharks–On Prediction Markets

ramon156

https://archive.is/7DSiy

fortran77

> "John Pederson outside the homeless shelter in Detroit where he has been living since losing money on Kalshi...Pederson lost $41,000 on a mention-market bet related to hip-hop artist A$AP Rocky in January"

dist-epoch

> On Kalshi, too, losers vastly outnumber winners. Spokeswoman Elisabeth Diana said there are 2.9 unprofitable users for each profitable one based on data from the past month So 25% of users are profitable? That's vastly more than on financial sites - stocks/futures/forex/options trading where only 5% of bettors are profitable.

ceejayoz

On a related note: "Someone allegedly used a hairdryer to rig Polymarket weather bets" https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/someone-allegedly-used-a-h...

Jtarii

Prediction markets are astrology for the boys.

hx8

I had a thesis two months ago that you could detect predictors with insider knowledge and ride their coat tails and spent some amount of time staring at the data and running some ML algos to detect them. I learned some things about the market during this time, but did not succeed in my detection algorithm. * Polymarket is a bit more transparent with who placed what bet, so it's a good place to go to study winners. * The most consistent Polymarket winner I saw was placing 95%+ odds many, many times a day. * Most markets will have a surprisingly small liquidity, so if your edge is just 5% you won't make as much as a 5% edge in the stock market could make you. This is good in that it keeps the biggest fish out, but some big players seem to be using strategies based on holding the most chips. * Paper trading in Polymarket/Kalshi is very different than paper trading in the stock market, because even a few grand in Polymarket/Kalshi can have a big impact in how other "traders" interact with you. The traditional paper trade validation -> unleash the bot strategy doesn't work. You need to real trade with real money and scale up while watching how the market responds. EDIT: Bonus learning -- yes the market runs by getting fish into the system. That's why Kalshi is advertising so much, it attracts suckers for the professional to win from, all while Kalshi takes a percentage.

freejazz

People keep saying they provide the market with information, and that's the benefit of allowing the insider trading, but no one has pointed out how in any way society has benefitted from the insider trading instances so far...

josefritzishere

If by "sharks" you mean "inside traders" then yes.

tsunamifury

I ran the earliest predictions market online at the reboot of The Industry Standard. Prediction markets fatally suffer from two Problems. 1) large sharks making huge bets at the end (destroying any signal from earlier bets) 2) inside information on poorly written bets. The solution is -parlay- edit: parimutuel style payouts but that destroys popularity (you are paid out at closing odds not at your time of bet odds spread to sell position).

cmiles8

This whole prediction market space seems like a 2026 version of ball and cup game betting. Most of the people participating fail to understand that they (and their pointless bets up for harvesting) are the product here.

JohnFen

Prediction markets are nothing more than gambling. Most people who gamble end up losing. If it were otherwise, running a gambling operation wouldn't be the enormously profitable endeavor that it is.

1vuio0pswjnm7

Alternative is archive.is Text-only, no Javascript, no CAPTCHA, no DDoS on blog, no geo-blocking, HTTPS optional: https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA22jnEi...

mathgradthrow

Everytime someone loses money on a bad bet in a prediction market, it's an opportunity for them to learn something about ~~counter-party risk~~ adverse selection. You could easily make the argument that the more people are losing in prediction markets, the more learning is happening.

jeffwask

So, the same as NFT's and Memecoin from the same people...

pessimizer

I thought the entire point of prediction markets was to attract insiders with a way to turn their knowledge into cash. Doesn't that imply that everybody else is going to be net negative? That's why death pools were supposed to be equivalent to assassination markets. Somebody would kill the person to win. The only way (I would think) to make money if you're not an insider is to take advantage of the fact that most people believe in the Law of Averages and consistently err to moderation, so they overestimate small chances and underestimate large chances. Just bet with the crowd when the crowd (and reason) is overwhelmingly on one side. That depends on the vig being low enough not to obliterate that little bit of expected profit, though.

rmb177

I realize I'm an N of 1, but I've participated in prediction markets since 2019 and am just above 5 figures in profit. Not life-changing money, but it certainly doesn't hurt. I'm pretty conservative in my predictions and just think there is a lot of free money on these sites. Maybe that just supports the sentiments of this article and most of the negative comments on this post. There are certainly cases where I got run over by the steamroller picking up nickels, but in general that's few and far between. A good example is getting trump losing the 2020 election at 90% after the election in November. If you find those types of markets and compound the earnings it's a pretty nice savings account. I've also been burned by insider trading and vague rule interpretations but at this point, you chalk it up to the nature of prediction markets. I now try to stay away from markets that are more manipulative (e.g. mention markets). I don't understand the hostility to prediction markets. There are definitely hedging opportunities and we're all adults.

blurbleblurble

What's the difference between penny stocks and prediction markets?