I've spent 50 dollars. I'm at $112, with $20 still invested that's worth $15 (shares in a market I bought are now priced lower). This represents maybe 8 hours or so of checking and refreshing the site and researching over the last two weeks. Which isn't to say that I view the thing as a ten dollar an hour job, which is maybe what I'm making if I divide my profit by labor. This is really enjoyable to me. Especially the time that I spend geeking out about it with a friend. And now that I'm playing with the house's money, it's easier to stomach losses. I do acknowledge though that I'm mainly benefitting from some luck and gut thinking, not that I'm some Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind. There's just a lot of panic activity on the site that I am the beneficiary of. Supposedly the primaries were this free for all. Michigan and Indiana saw a lot of money change hands. Also, fucking Trump and his supporters. Take this market for example. The odds of GOP victory in the presidential election are slim, let alone a 370 vote landslide. Here's a potential map of that, and it would take a miracle. Even if Hillary makes a series of massive gaffes (and one would think it would take much more than just that), there is a 99%+ of her winning California and New York, so Trump has to sweep pretty much the rest of the United States. Yet, here's this market buoyed by Trump fanatics saying that there is an 11% chance of a GOP 370 landslide. So if you have any money you'd like to see grow 11%, you can dump it all in this market and wait till election day.
6344 shares of NO in "at least 370 GOP electoral votes" are available now at 89ยข. These would pay a dollar each by November 9. I have been avoiding such narrow margins, but you made me think again. After the 10% fee the profit would be a dime per share, just over 11% in 64 days, equivalent to an annual rate of 64% if my math is right. That's not so bad, for an almost-sure bet.... But to make a respectable profit of $100, I would need to buy a thousand shares, staking $890. That is just over the limit of $850 per contract, and also well beyond my comfort zone. It makes me start imagining how things could go wrong ... what if Clinton has to drop out because of a health issue? That's what I love about having something on the line. It makes me look for ways in which I could be wrong, taking the outside view. Looking for evidence that contradicts our expectations, rather than confirms them, is a difficult and essential aspect of good thinking.So if you have any money you'd like to see grow 11%
One outcome of playing PredictIt as much as I have is understanding in a new light what exactly Clinton has a 74% chance of winning but a 26% chance of losing means. Putting $850 (1,148 shares) on a 74% sure-thing is a different beast than thinking Trump was a moron in that immigration speech and Hillary really ought to sweep this whole thing. Even though, statistically, they're the exact same thing.