When we’re a long distance out, that’s when you get a lot of spin and high hopes type press narratives. Now, however, is when prediction markets really begin separating reality from spin.

On today’s show, I explained where things stand right now on the fight for Congress and the one problem Republicans simply can’t afford to ignore. We also look at why the Senate remains the real prize, where I think the markets are right (and where they might still be wrong), and how I’m approaching the final 99 days.

The Next Chapter for Predictable

I’ve also been hinting for a while that we’ve been working on some new things behind the scenes.

Today I finally pulled the curtain back, at least a little bit.

We’re getting ready to roll out a premium tier for people who want to go deeper into prediction markets and follow along more closely during election season. We’re still putting the finishing touches on exactly what it’ll include, but one of the MOST common things you ask me is how you can get my picks. While I’ll certainly keep sharing positions on the main show, if you’ve ever wished for more behind-the-scenes access, more discussion, or more insight into how I think through trades, I think you’re going to like where we’re headed.

That said, I also wanted to make something crystal clear.

If you’re perfectly happy watching the show on YouTube, listening on the podcast, or reading these posts here on Substack... nothing is changing. The daily show, articles, commentary and everything you’ve come to expect will still be here. I want Predictable to remain the best free place on the internet to follow election prediction markets.

The premium tier is about adding more—not taking anything away.

Business Time

The next three months are going to be absolutely wild. Make sure you’re bookmarking PredictableShow.com as the place to hang with me through all the madness.

Campaigns will panic. Polls will swing. The media will overreact. Prediction markets will move before everyone else catches up. Someone’s weird fetishes will be outed.

Sounds like fun. Glad you’re here!

If you missed today’s episode, you can watch it here:

If you had the Philly market, you made out VERY well on this. So what was up with that Miami Heat accidental livestream? Why did Lebron choose Philly? What can we learn from how this market played out? Those questions and more in today’s LIVESTREAM. You can watch it HERE:

The election calendar is finally starting to wake up.

We’ve been stuck in that awkward stretch where there are markets to watch, but not many that are screaming “buy me.” That’s about to change.

On today’s Predictable, we looked ahead at the next wave of primary elections. South Dakota, Michigan, Kansas and several others to see where the best opportunities might be before everyone else piles in. Sometimes the best trade isn’t finding the obvious winner. Sometimes it’s knowing which race to avoid altogether.

ACCOUNTABILITY

We also brought back another Predictable Postmortem, where Dan Andros joined me to review a couple of my recent misses.

Yes, I finally admitted defeat on the Jalen Brunson NBA 2K cover market. While my position may have lost, I can still sleep well knowing I would’ve made a better decision than whoever failed to choose the Finals MVP for the game cover athlete.

And because no episode is complete without wandering off the rails for a few minutes, we somehow ended up talking about LeBron James, Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham, and why the WNBA seems determined to make life harder for itself.

If you’re trying to get ahead of the August election calendar, I think you’ll enjoy this one.

Make sure you’re following along with the podcast as well! Follow me here:

I was legitimately upset that my flight got canceled because it meant I wasn’t going to spend my morning sifting through election spreadsheets.

I know. I have issues.

But on today’s Predictable show, I explain why I was so excited.

Some really interesting information was just released that gives us a look under the hood at the users of Kalshi, one of the top prediction markets. Three-quarters (75%) of all visitors to Kalshi come just to see the odds on individual events, while only one in four actually trade.

That means they’re going there for information. It backs up what we’ve been telling you for weeks: prediction markets are valuable because they give you better information than the mainstream media, campaigns, or even polls.

I also break down what happened in Arizona last night, some key election positions I’m watching, and answer a bunch of your comments and questions.

You also may have noticed something new today if you’re a subscriber to PredictableShow.com: an opportunity to watch the daily show being taped and hang out with me between breaks. Prediction markets are only getting bigger, and it’s going to be a wild ride as we grow right alongside them. I’m excited to have you with us on the ground floor.

If you missed today’s show, I think it’s an important one. And even if you already watched it, go ahead and give it another view on YouTube—if for no other reason than to help us fight the algorithm. Apparently prediction markets are a little too dangerous for big tech and the algorithm. Let's prove it wrong.

Here’s the YouTube link:

Make sure you’re following along with the podcast as well! Follow me here:

Do make sure and watch it, even if it’s just to help us fight the MSM and the nanny state, who have decided prediction markets are scary and bad. They’d rather you not see this:

The latest swipe at prediction markets comes in the form of an opinion piece in The Hill arguing that prediction markets are becoming a dark, insider-driven menace. I don’t agree with that conclusion, but that’s not the main problem with the piece. The problem is the author doesn’t seem to understand the most basic mechanics of how these markets actually work.

Look, I’m perfectly happy to debate whether prediction markets are good, bad, gambling, investing, or something in between. Those are interesting conversations. But before we have them, can we at least agree that you should probably know even the most basic facts of what you’re talking about first?

The article claims companies like Kalshi and Polymarket set odds the way sportsbooks do and need to balance action to stay profitable. Did anyone at The Hill bother to check? Anyone looking at prediction markets will realize in about ten seconds that no, they don’t need to balance action to stay profitable. They’re marketplaces. Buyers and sellers determine prices. The exchanges collect fees. That’s Prediction Markets 101, and getting that wrong is like writing about the stock market while assuming the New York Stock Exchange picks Apple’s share price every morning.

If we’re going to have a serious national conversation about prediction markets, we deserve better than that.

The good news hiding behind the bad headlines

Ironically, one of the biggest stories this week actually showed the system working.

The White House teleprompter operator allegedly used inside knowledge of President Trump’s speeches to profit on mention markets. That sounds terrible… until you realize who caught it.

Kalshi.

Perhaps the writers at The Hill aren’t aware, but Kalshi is not part of the FBI. It’s (GASP!) a prediction market! The exchange flagged suspicious activity, alerted regulators, and kicked off the investigation. That’s exactly what you’d want a regulated financial marketplace to do. It’s evidence the safeguards are working, not proof they’re failing.

That’s a pretty important distinction.

A few opportunities worth watching

We also caught up on everything I missed while I was on vacation.

The Maine Senate race continues to get stranger by the day, and I think the market may be underestimating Susan Collins after Democrats appear ready to nominate Troy Jackson. I’m not predicting a Collins victory, but I do think the current price deserves another look.

We also cashed another LeBron James trade based on something that had nothing to do with basketball and everything to do with timing. Sometimes the best prediction market plays aren’t about knowing more than everyone else. They’re about thinking one step ahead.

That’s usually where the value lives.

Tonight, we go live

Speaking of value...

We’re back live tonight, and we’ve got plenty to dig into.

We’ll preview Arizona, take another look at the rapidly changing Lindsey Graham replacement markets, answer your questions, and, knowing this audience, someone will probably find a completely ridiculous market I’ve somehow never seen before. Those are usually my favorite parts of the show anyway.

If you’ve been meaning to jump into prediction markets, live shows are honestly the best place to do it. We can react to the news in real time, look at prices as they move, and occasionally talk each other out of doing something stupid.

Come hang out with us.

See you tonight.

It’s so common that it convinces people they’re bad at prediction markets when, in reality, they’re just sizing their trades the wrong way.

In today’s episode, I break down that mistake, the simple adjustment that can completely change your results, and another batch of rules from the Predictable Constitution that I’ve built over more than a decade of making, and surviving, my own mistakes.

We also revisit several of our past trades, including Graham Platner, the Iran markets, Spencer Pratt, and a few positions that worked, along with one that definitely didn’t. I always want you to see both.

Election season is about to heat up, and I want everyone following this show to avoid the mistakes that cost new traders the most. If you’re serious about getting better before the biggest opportunities arrive, this episode is worth your time.

Watch it above OR check it out on our YouTube Channel HERE.

That’s especially true over the next few weeks.

The biggest rush of primary season is behind us for the moment. August will be packed. September will be packed. Then we’ll sprint toward Election Day. But these quieter stretches are often where some of the best positions get built. The reason for that is mainly because fewer people are paying attention.

That’s why we spent our latest show looking ahead instead of looking back.

The Thesis Is Always More Important Than The Trade

One thing we’ve tried to do on Predictable is build repeatable ways of thinking instead of chasing random picks. Sometimes a thesis survives. Sometimes it doesn’t. Earlier this week, we officially retired the idea that a Trump endorsement is basically an automatic win in every Republican primary. It’s still an important factor. It just isn’t enough by itself anymore.

Now we’re testing new ideas. Colorado is a great example.

At first glance, it looks like another establishment Democrat versus progressive challenger. Normally, that might point in one direction. But the rules matter. Colorado’s large unaffiliated voting bloc changes the equation in a meaningful way, which is one reason I’m still comfortable holding my position in John Hickenlooper even after his price climbed. The market sees one race. I’m trying to understand the structure underneath it.

That’s usually where value comes from.

Don’t Let One Poll Convince You To Panic

One of the biggest market moves came in Colorado’s governor primary, where a single poll completely flipped the odds in just a few hours. That’s always worth paying attention to, but it’s also a good reminder that not all information deserves the same weight.

This particular poll was commissioned by one of the campaigns. That doesn’t automatically make it wrong, but it does mean you should ask a few more questions before treating it like gospel. Is it confirming a broader trend? Is it an outlier? Would we even be seeing this poll if it had shown the opposite result?

Prediction markets can move fast, and sometimes they move too fast. A sharp swing creates opportunity just as often as it reflects new reality. If you already had conviction before the poll, this might be the moment to revisit your research instead of abandoning it. Sometimes the market is correctly incorporating new information. Other times it’s simply handing patient traders a better price.

Those moments are worth paying attention to.

Position Size Matters More Than Most People Think

One of the questions I get more than almost anything else is, “How much should I put on a trade?”

The answer is almost never “everything.”

I tend to think about positions in tiers. Some are large because I think the value is overwhelming or I have unusually high conviction. Others are medium-sized because I like the setup but still recognize there’s plenty of uncertainty. Then there are small positions, where I think I may have found something interesting but I’m still doing the homework.

My favorite category, though, is what I call a marker position.

Sometimes I’ll literally buy a single share. You may be thinking, well Stu, that’s dumb. If you’re trying to increase your bankroll that way, yes it’s dumb. But I do it simply so I don’t forget about the market. Think of it as a reminder fee. That one share becomes a bookmark. It reminds me to keep checking for new polling, new reporting, or anything else that could change the picture. More often than you’d think, those tiny marker positions eventually turn into much larger investments because the research keeps leading me back to them.

The goal isn’t to have an opinion on every market. The goal is to know which markets deserve more of your attention.

Even The Weird Markets Can Make You Better

We also had some fun on the most recent episode of Predictable.

We debated whether Jaylen Brunson should be the cover athlete for NBA 2K. Dan and I spent a little time talking about the latest Jaylen Brown trade rumors. Somehow LeBron James turned a retirement market into an investing discussion, which feels completely normal around here at this point. And for the record, I think there’s very little chance Lebron retires quietly into the night. The only thing LeBron enjoys more than playing basketball is everyone talking about LeBron playing basketball. Hard to imagine him skipping a farewell tour.

As entertaining as those markets are, they also serve a purpose. Our “Predict the Prediction” segment forces us to estimate what we think a market should be before we ever look at the actual price. That’s an incredibly useful exercise because it trains you to think independently instead of simply accepting whatever the market is currently saying.

If your estimate is dramatically different from the market’s, you’ve found something worth researching. Sometimes you’ll discover an opportunity that everyone else has missed. Other times you’ll discover exactly why the market disagrees with you. Both outcomes are valuable because both make you a better trader.

That’s really the point of the exercise.

I’ll be on vacation next week, but prediction markets don’t really care about my travel schedule. I’ll still be following Louisiana this weekend, Colorado on Tuesday, and posting updates whenever I find something worth your attention.

One lesson I’ve learned over the years is that the best opportunities often show up when everyone else assumes nothing is happening. The best trades rarely announce themselves, so even if I'm on the beach working my way through an embarrassing amount of cheese fries, I'll still be on the lookout.

Then the early vote came in from her opponent’s turf first, the scoreboard looked scary, and the market panicked and dumped her to a nickel.

Her real votes had not come in yet. So we bought. She closed at 99.9%.

That is the whole game. When the market panics, discipline gets paid.

We covered all of it live last night. Catch up here:

Blaze TV YouTube

Predictable on YouTube

The Livestream Replays on Substack

The video at the top of this post has the combined pre-primary and post-primary Substack livestreams from last night’s action. Definitely worth a watch if you want to continue to learn about how these prediction markets work and how to take advantage of them in the future.

If you want these calls in real time instead of the recap, that is the whole point of being here. Drop your email and subscribe to Predictable for free, so the next time the market panics, you are already in the room.

Subscribe now

For a long time, the basic idea has been simple: when Donald Trump really wants someone to win a Republican primary, he usually gets his way. That trade has treated us pretty well in recent history. But markets don’t care about history. They care about what’s happening right now.

The latest test comes in South Carolina, where Pamela Evette collapsed from around 90% all the way to under 2% despite Trump’s endorsement. One example doesn’t kill a thesis, but it’s enough to make me ask whether we need to rethink how much value that endorsement still carries. We’ll get another test soon with several races on the board.

Playing Tiny Probabilities

One thing I talked about was how to handle these tiny probabilities when they show up. If you have a candidate sitting around 2%, sometimes you can structure the position so that a modest move higher lets you pull your original investment out and essentially play with house money.

It doesn’t happen every time, but that’s one of the advantages prediction markets can offer if you’re patient. You don’t need a longshot to win. Sometimes you just need the market to move.

A Busy Week of Primaries

We also ran through a bunch of markets around the country. South Carolina continues to offer interesting opportunities, and Maryland has some fascinating dynamics with AIPAC and crypto money influencing races.

New York may be even more interesting. There are some familiar patterns developing between socialist candidates and establishment-backed candidates, and one race in particular reminded me of a setup we’ve profited from before.

Another Potential Setup

One market that caught my attention was New York’s 17th District. Republicans appear to be helping boost one candidate they think would be easier to beat in the general election. We’ve seen versions of this strategy before, and it’s created opportunities for traders willing to step in before the broader market catches on.

Whether this one plays out the same way remains to be seen, but it’s the type of weird incentive structure I love looking for.

NBA Draft Positions

We also spent some time on Utah, where another Trump endorsement test is developing, before shifting over to the NBA Draft.

I’ve got positions on several players, including A.J. Dybantsa, and a few contrarian ideas lower in the top five. But I want to repeat the warning I gave last night: don’t get carried away.

These are fun markets, but the biggest opportunities are still ahead of us. Election season is coming, and I’d rather have dry powder available when November starts heating up.

Back Live Tonight!

We’ll be back live again tonight, and there should be plenty more to talk about. If the markets move, we’ll be there.

On Blaze TV YouTube

On Predictable Show YouTube

See you then!

How this unfolded

You learned it as a kid, and it applies to prediction markets. “It can’t hurt to ask.”

I don’t know why you would want to buy NO shares of Hakeem Jeffries to win his congressional primary. I really don’t. He scared everybody out of the race and is running unopposed. So unopposed, that New York cancelled it’s primary in this district, originally scheduled for this coming Tuesday.

So, why would anyone be buying no shares? Well, I happened to have a bunch of offers to buy shares on the YES side that have been hanging out there for weeks, unpurchased. Then, suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, someone started vacuuming up my shares. A few at first, and then more and more and more. Until all of my shares had been bought up. And then seemingly, thousands of other peoples shares were being bought. Batch after batch after batch.

What happened? Did Hakeem Jeffries just announce he was dropping out? Did some new Epstein files just leak? What is going on? I went on a livestream to get your theories.

There were lots of ideas that made me laugh, but nothing seemed exactly right. There was a chance that insider trading was going on. But, that’s illegal and if you’re trying to do that in the US, you’re likely to get snagged.

Anyway, it seemed like it was over. Maybe it was just one crazy person throwing dumb money around? But then…

It started happening again

This time— it was even bigger. More and more shares flying off the market. In massive numbers. I had listed some more to sell, and as fast as I could list them, was as fast as they would fly off the market. Someone was sure Hakeem Jeffries was not winning this primary, despite all of the evidence to the contrary.

These moments are what make prediction markets so fun, and sometimes so intense. I was racking my brain, trying to figure out why on earth someone would be buying these shares. Did I click the wrong button? Did I miss a breaking Hakeem Jeffries story during my 35,000 twitter news checks? Why do these shares keep selling and selling and selling?

That’s when I checked Polymarket global

Over on Polymarket’s global exchange, shares for Hakeem Jeffries to win his - I remind you —UNOPPOSED primary - were trading at around 50%! This meant one of two things:

1. Someone knows something serious is about to happen with Hakeem Jeffries candidacy, and they are running over to the foreign exchange to hide away from US regulators. (Again, this probably won’t work, as we found out with the Venezuela situation.)

2. There has to be a quirk in the rules somewhere.

Someone thought they beat the system

Despite the fact that in all likelihood Hakeem Jeffries is going to be the democratic nominee for his house seat, someone or some group discovered a line in the rules they thought they could exploit. Here it is:

This line in the rules, likely crafted for some catastrophic outcome that might cancel all elections, seems to unwittingly describe what happened in Jeffries run to be renominated as the democratic candidate.

The reasoning goes like this:

Honestly, this is a pretty rational reading of the rules, as written. Someone picked up on this “one weird trick” an started absolutely loading up on cheap shares… and then more expensive ones.

Why was the Kalshi market moving?

Kalshi, the American exchange, does not have this clause in their rules. So, why were the Kalshi markets moving around?

Instead of going to 50 cents and below, Kalshi’s Jeffries YES market hung in the 90s for most of this journey, other than a short drop into the 80s.

But, why?

It could be that people saw Polymarket’s move and assumed something was going on. These markets usually stay pretty close to each other.

It could be a cross exchange arbitrage play of sorts. With the speed of the sales, it sure seemed like bots or AI grabbing all of these shares.

Maybe it’s something else my very tired brain can’t think about right now. But, it happened, and I was in the middle of it, driving myself insane.

And then…clarification

It all happened so fast. Just when I thought I would be up all night trying to figure out what was going on, Polymarket’s global exchange posted a clarification.

The dreaded clarification. “Additional context.” Exchanges will occasionally post something like this when rules are too vague or are giving traders the wrong impression on an outstanding question. If you’re on the wrong side of a clarification, your position was just lit on fire. If you’re on the right side of it, it’s nirvana.

Ladies and gentlemen, the additional context:

There it is. Since this race will quite clearly be decided by the “relevant party” determining the race by a “different method”, Hakeem Jeffries YES instantly jumped from 43% to 99% in seconds. Immediately, Kalshi’s price shot up as well to 99%.

The entire escapade wrapped up in the place where it all began. With Jeffries, the guy who is going to win, winning. And your lovable host having a very profitable evening.

Isn’t this an unfair decision?

If you were the person who thought they uncovered an infinite money printing machine earlier today, then this is a question you definitely have an answer for. The rules said that if no primary occured, all candidates would resolve to no. The primary was cancelled. You’d have to feel like you were right, and that the clarification wound up completely burning you and all of your money. I have some sympathy for that position in this case.

Sure, you thought you had a legalistic way to grab a bunch of money from people who were actually had the right answer to the spirit of the question. But, the rules are the rules. Most of the time, at least.

“Additional context”

With all of this said, don’t let a story like this scare you away from prediction markets. I have been investing in these markets since 2014, and in that time I can’t remember being involved in more than one or two markets where a rules question like this wound up being a determining factor. In this case, I wasn’t even trading this contract on Polymarket global, so I don’t even think this would qualify for me personally.

The truth is, prediction markets need to continue to improve in making their rules clear and concise, so that average people can understand them. They have already come a long way in this regard, but there are still occasional issues that can and should be eliminated.

These issues are very, very rare. You will probably never deal with one of them in your time trading these markets. But, you should also have awareness about the times when these issues do pop up, so that you can try and understand and avoid them.

Now for the fun part.

In the middle of this, I did a live stream. We talked about how this was happening and how you could take advantage of it.

Did you watch? Did you jump in? Did you make a nice profit? Tell me about your wins!

Let’s keep building this thing together and ramp up to November. Let’s go!

*It’s really late, this is very sloppily written, and I’m not going through it to make corrections.

**This post is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing here constitutes financial or investment advice. Trade in prediction markets at your own risk.

***It’s possible this reads like the guy at your office recounting his fantasy football week in review. For this, I apologize.

Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe someone made a mistake. Maybe something crazy is about to happen. I have absolutely no idea. But I walked through what I saw, what the rules actually say, and why “it can’t hurt to ask” might need to become one of our constitutional amendments around here.

Give the livestream a watch and let me know your theories. Because honestly, I still don’t know what to make of it.

And speaking of strange markets and active theses, make sure and check out tonight’s FULL show as well. Below is a recap of everything we covered on tonight’s full show…

Tonight’s show started with the latest “deal” between the United States and Iran. I put “deal” in quotation marks for a reason.

What we have right now is not a peace agreement or even a nuclear agreement. It’s a memorandum of understanding, which, according to one Trump administration official, is basically a table of contents for a future agreement.

Could it lead to positive things? Of course. I root for peace, and I hope this works. But if you’ve watched this show for any length of time, you know one of our active thesis statements has been pretty simple: when the media says peace is around the corner with Iran, we tend to go the other way.

That thesis has treated us well. It has made us money multiple times. But like every thesis, it only stays active as long as reality supports it. If this process turns into an actual agreement and delivers real results, we’ll retire it and move on.

For now, I think there are better opportunities in the markets surrounding an actual nuclear deal than there are in trying to guess exactly how quickly traffic through the Strait of Hormuz returns to normal. Multiple sides want that waterway open, which makes those markets a little more complicated than they first appear.

As always, read the rules.

Tomorrow’s Primaries

Tomorrow night we have Oklahoma, Georgia, and Alabama. Once again we’ll be testing another active thesis statement: Trump gets what he wants in Republican primaries.

That thesis has been incredibly profitable for us. Ken Paxton alone became part of the Predictable Hall of Fame. But every election season brings new tests, and tomorrow’s races are fascinating.

Georgia remains one of the few states where Trump endorsements haven’t always translated into automatic victories. Oklahoma presents a runoff situation where timing itself becomes a risk. Alabama has become surprisingly volatile as momentum shifts between candidates.

And honestly, one of the biggest lessons from tonight’s show may be this: sometimes the best investment is the one you don’t make.

You don’t have to force a position.

Not every market has value. Sometimes preserving your capital is the smartest play available.

What We’re Watching

Tomorrow we’ll be live as the polls close at 7 p.m. Eastern. As always, we’ll be watching the vote returns in real time and looking for opportunities the markets haven’t fully priced in yet.

We’ve caught several of those moments already this season. We’ve also helped people avoid losses by recognizing when a position had gone south.

We’ll dig deeper into margin markets, vote-share markets, and some of the longshot opportunities that could develop as results come in.

And yes, we still owe you aliens.

We had plans tonight to talk about Spielberg’s latest movie and some new alien-related stories, but I spent way too much time talking about Iran and primaries. We’ll get to that soon enough.

Until then, remember: read the rules, don’t force positions, and if the media tells you everything is solved in the Middle East, maybe wait a minute before believing them.

See you tomorrow night.

LIVE NOW:

And coming up later tonight, ELECTION OVERTIME:

Election season rolls on, and tonight we’re back at it with another livestream as results come in from Maine, South Carolina, Nevada, North Dakota, and several other races. But before we get there, I wanted to go back through some of what happened last night and explain a few things.

First of all, what we’re seeing right now is weird. It’s not normal that California takes forever to count ballots. It shouldn’t be accepted and it shouldn’t be defended. California is an outlier not just in America, but in the world. Nobody should think it’s reasonable that races are still changing weeks after Election Day. But while you can’t fix California’s rules in real time, you can price them in. That’s what prediction markets allow you to do.

The Nithya Raman Position

If you watched the show before the election, you know I talked about Nithya Raman when she was trading around nine cents.

I went into that position expecting I might lose. That’s part of this. Value doesn’t mean certainty. It means the market is pricing something lower than you think it should.

My thought was pretty simple. A lot of Los Angeles voters would never vote for Spencer Pratt under any circumstances. They may not have loved Raman, but they weren’t going to vote Republican either. At nine cents, I thought there was value.

Turns out there was.

I talked to one viewer who bought around that same level and entered yesterday up more than 300%. I love hearing stories like that. Ironically, I sold my Raman position for a profit on election night because I thought Pratt had done enough to hold second place. I rolled those gains into Pratt No because I figured I had two ways to win. In hindsight, I would have made more money staying with Raman. That’s okay. I’m not going to sit here and pretend I hit everything. If I get something wrong, I’ll tell you. That’s part of the process.

Remove Emotion

One of the hardest things to do in prediction markets is separate your rooting interests from your investments. I wanted Spencer Pratt to win. I think Los Angeles is heading in the wrong direction, and I don’t think Nithya Raman would be an improvement. But that’s different from asking what is likely to happen.

Sometimes I actually prefer being in positions where I’m rooting against myself politically because it gives me confidence that I’m following the data instead of my emotions. If I’m going to suffer through bad political outcomes, I’d at least like to get paid for my pain.

The Platner Play

Another opportunity we discussed involved Graham Platner in Maine. The headlines surrounding him have been nonstop, but my argument was pretty straightforward. Janet Mills had already suspended her campaign. Roughly a third of the vote had already been cast before the latest accusations surfaced. And most importantly, I actually read the contract rules.

That’s always important.

The market only cares about who wins Tuesday’s primary. It doesn’t care what happens afterward. When I wrote about this opportunity last week at PredictableShow.com, Platner was trading around 95.5 cents.

That might not sound exciting, but a 4.7% return in a few days is a strong return if you can repeat it over and over again. I also took a smaller, more aggressive position on Platner winning by more than 50 points. That position has already moved significantly.

Maybe I should listen to myself more often.

Building Toward November

One thing I want to stress is that what we’ve done so far this election season is not normal. I can’t promise 1,000% winners every week. The Paxton margin market was incredible. Raman has worked out beautifully. But the goal isn’t to chase miracles every Tuesday.

The goal is to stack gains.

Five percent here. Eight percent there. A longshot that occasionally pops. Build the bankroll and be ready when November arrives. That’s what we’re trying to do.

Tonight’s Livestream

Tonight we’ll be live again as the results come in. We’ll go through Maine, South Carolina, and the other races, talk through positions in real time, and hopefully find some opportunities while the market is still moving.

So join us tonight on YouTube and at PredictableShow.com. Subscribe, turn on notifications, and come build this thing with us. We’re still early, and we’re just getting started.

Watch:

On YouTube

You may have heard the previous sentence comes with a bit of an asterisk!

It’s tempting to overstate the effect on the race of this latest controversy in the very short term. If you happen to frown on accusations of assault or spending a decade plus with a Nazi symbol on your chest, perhaps you might think Platner has a risk of losing. But, a few things to remember…

1. Janet Mills (Platner’s only real opposition) dropped out because she was already getting crushed by Platner when she was in the race, polling more than 30 points behind. It certainly makes sense to assume she’s going to lose by even more when she is not in the race, despite her floating that she’s technically still on the ballot.

2. Maybe 25-35% of the vote had already been cast before this latest controversy even appeared in the news. There is always some protest vote, but I’ll be surprised if Platner has less than 80% of pre-most-recent-scandal vote, giving him a huge cushion as we enter into election day voting.

3. You may understandably be thinking that Platner could have 428 new accusers over the next few months which may force him to drop out, and this might put your investment at risk. However, the rules of the main Kalshi contract clearly state this contract is only dealing with the primary election, not who is ultimately on the ballot in November.

   

   

4. This is admittedly more of my opinion than a statistical analysis, but it sure doesn’t seem like democratic voters care all that much about this. This may seem shocking until you consider they just elected an alleged Al Qaeda operative to represent them in congress. There’s a bit of an argument that a Nazi tattoo might just help Graham with some voters!

How can you play this market?

As I write this, Platner is a 95.5% favorite to win on Tuesday on Kalshi. If he wins, if would give you a 4.5 cent profit on every 95.5 cents invested, which works out to a 4.7% return. Assuming the race is called on Tuesday, you receive this 4.7% in four days, which works out to a 429% simple annual return or APR, our chosen metric to try to contextualize these investments.

Want to get frisky with phustle0331?

“Oh, phustle,” Fetterman said of Platner. “What kind of a creep? What kind of a creeper has been on … a platform like Kik, and send a dozen explicit kinds of messages and who knows what else?”

Maybe you need a bit more excitement than can be afforded by stacking small gains, and want a bigger payoff? Stay off of Kik, and try the margin of victory market.

The most enticing option is Platner to win by 50+ points. Currently sitting at around a 40% chance, you can more than double your money here. You’re basically looking for Platner to hold 75% of the vote. Definitely a possibility. There are other options for every 10 points of margin.

Another safer one I kind of like is NO on Platner by 10-20%, currently in the high 80s. Hard to believe he won’t clear a 20 percent victory. If he doesn’t, he’s in massive trouble come November.

Is this a “sure thing”?

No! Remember, “sure thing” ALWAYS comes with air quotes. There is a small risk he could drop out of the race before Tuesday I suppose… but even then— he still might win.

Disclaimer: Predictable market data, analysis, and content provided on this site are for informational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing here constitutes financial, investment, or legal advice. Trading in prediction markets involves significant risk of capital loss. Trade at your own discretion.

One of my favorite examples came out of Iowa. If you read the media coverage heading into the election, you would have thought the Democratic primary was a coin flip. The profiles were detailed. The candidate backstories were compelling. Every article seemed to suggest a dramatic battle that could go either way.

The prediction markets disagreed. They had Turk sitting around a 93% favorite, and when election night arrived, that’s essentially what happened. Turk won comfortably.

This is a pattern we see over and over again. Traditional coverage tends to focus on narratives and personalities. Prediction markets focus on probabilities. Sometimes those two things point in the same direction. Sometimes they don’t. Last night was another example of the markets seeing the race more clearly than the coverage did.

That doesn’t mean prediction markets are always right. They’re not. We had a reminder of that last night too. But they are often much better at filtering out noise and identifying what actually matters. That’s one of the reasons we’ve spent so much time building this project around them.

Gaming California’s Dumb Election System

The biggest races of the night came out of California, which means we now enter the familiar phase where everyone waits days or weeks for vote totals to crawl toward completion.

A lot of people immediately jump to accusations of fraud whenever California takes forever to count votes. That’s a separate question. What is undeniably true is that California has built a system that practically guarantees confusion. If your goal is to create public confidence in elections, this is not how you would design the process.

The sequence is pretty predictable by now. Polls close and a massive batch of early votes hits the board almost immediately. Then, election-day voting gets added. After that comes a steady stream of late-arriving mail ballots, followed by provisional ballots, signature cures, and everything else that drags the process out for days.

Understanding that sequence is critical if you’re following prediction markets. A vote total is never just a vote total. You have to understand what votes remain and which voters are likely represented in those outstanding ballots.

In the governor’s race, Steve Hilton and Xavier Becerra appear positioned to advance while Tom Steyer looks headed toward another very expensive political disappointment. In Los Angeles, Karen Bass is safely through while Spencer Pratt currently holds the second runoff position.

The question isn’t what the board looks like right now. The question is what happens when the remaining vote arrives. That’s where the opportunity usually is.

The Trump endorsement thesis finally got a real test

One of the recurring themes on this show has been simple: when Donald Trump wants someone to win a Republican primary, he usually gets his way.

That thesis has been incredibly useful. It helped explain races in Texas and Louisiana, and it has pointed us toward several profitable opportunities over the past few months.

Last night finally gave us a serious challenge to that theory. Randy Feenstra was Trump’s candidate in Iowa. He lost.

What’s interesting about this race is that Trump wasn’t stepping into a situation where the grassroots base already wanted the candidate. In many conversations I had with people in Iowa, support seemed to be flowing elsewhere. Trump endorsed late and tried to push the race in a different direction.

It wasn’t enough.

That doesn’t necessarily kill the thesis. I still think Trump’s endorsement remains one of the most powerful forces in Republican primaries. But it does give us an important data point. The endorsement is not magic. There are limits, and now we have at least one meaningful example of where those limits may exist.

Prediction markets are ultimately about updating your understanding of reality. Sometimes the most valuable information comes from the positions that lose.

If you missed last night’s show, it’s worth going back and watching (video link above). We walked through every position, every win, every loss, and the thinking behind all of it in real time. We’ll be back again tonight looking at California, the remaining vote, and the next set of opportunities on the board.

If you haven’t subscribed yet, make sure you’re following both the Predictable YouTube channel and the Substack at PredictableShow.com. We’re working to build our portfolios leading up to November - I hope you’ll come along for the ride!

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Before all of that happens, I wanted to walk through the positions and ideas that are already in play.

A big part of the stream focuses on California, which is probably the most interesting state on the board tonight. I went through several positions I’ve already taken, including earlier “no” positions on Eric Swalwell, Chad Bianco, and Matt Mahan. I also explained why I’ve been taking profits on Xavier Becerra after a strong run-up and why I’m still skeptical that Steve Hilton ultimately wins in November, even if he performs well tonight.

We also spent a lot of time on Los Angeles, where Spencer Pratt has gone from an afterthought to a legitimate factor in the mayor’s race. The market has noticed. The question is whether it has noticed enough. I also talked through a small position on Nithya Raman and some of the different ways traders can approach the race beyond simply picking the eventual winner.

One of the points I tried to emphasize throughout the stream is that election nights on Predictable aren’t really about cheering for outcomes. They’re about finding opportunities. Sometimes that means taking a position against a candidate you personally like. Sometimes it means buying into a candidate you don’t.

You have to suck the emotion out of it.

That’s one of the reasons I wanted to get this stream out before results started coming in. Once the votes begin arriving, the conversation changes. Markets move. New information comes in. Sometimes opportunities appear that weren’t obvious a few hours earlier.

We’ve seen that happen before on election nights, and we’ll be looking for it again tonight.

If you’re planning to join us for the livestream coverage, start with this preview first. The positions are already on the board. The reasoning is here. Then we’ll see what happens when the results start rolling in.

It’s going to be a fun night, navigating all of these results in real-time with you. Stay glued to the YouTube channel and this Substack feed around 9PM ET and 11PM ET as results begin coming in.

See you tonight! On YouTube and subscribe below to catch it here on Substack.

If you watched our livestream Tuesday night as we wargamed the Cornyn collapse in real-time, you already know what happened: the Paxton positions exploded, the margin market went nuclear, and one of the trades we highlighted at around 8 cents wound up paying out for over a 1000% gain.

That’s the flashy part. Tonight’s episode of Predictable was about something much more valuable: How we got there before the market fully understood what was happening.

Because honestly, anyone can celebrate a result after the fact. The entire point of this show is figuring out why the market is mispricing something while there’s still time to act on it. That’s what we walked through tonight. Not just “Paxton won” but also why the market kept underestimating the size of the win. Why the Trump endorsement changed the race more than traders wanted to admit. Why the margin markets were still sleepy even after the outright winner market had mostly corrected itself.

And maybe most importantly: Why prediction markets keep revealing signals the political media either misses entirely… or notices way too late.

The Difference Between Watching Politics and Trading It

By the time election night arrived, the media framing around Texas had basically settled into: “Paxton probably wins.” Which was true.

But prediction markets don’t reward you for being vaguely correct. They reward you for figuring out how correct consensus actually is. That’s where the opportunity was.

Most traders were still treating the race like a normal competitive primary. Polling averages suggested a relatively comfortable Paxton lead, but still something in the range of a normal political victory. The market mostly agreed.

That’s why the “Paxton by 20+” margin market was sitting around 8%.

And honestly, once you stepped back and looked at the incentives, that number started to feel ridiculous. Because this race stopped being a traditional Senate primary the second Donald Trump endorsed Paxton. That was the real signal.

We’ve talked about this thesis repeatedly on the show: When Trump decides he wants something in a Republican primary, Republican voters usually comply.

Not always. But often enough that the market still seems too slow to fully price it in. The interesting part is that people say they understand this dynamic. Then they continue pricing races like they don’t. That disconnect is where a lot of these opportunities come from.

The ‘Sara Gonzalez Fade’

One of my favorite parts of tonight’s episode was revisiting what we like to call the “Sara Gonzalez Fade.” There was this weird stretch where the market kept assuming Trump would eventually endorse Cornyn simply because he hadn’t endorsed Paxton yet. But every day Trump stayed silent, the opposite became more obvious.

If Trump wanted to save Cornyn, why was he waiting? Sara pointed this out weeks ago on Stu Does America, and in retrospect you can literally watch the market slowly realizing she was right in real time. The chart starts fading. Cornyn starts slipping. Paxton starts climbing. The endorsement eventually lands and suddenly everyone acts shocked by the result the market had already been whispering about for weeks.

That’s the stuff I love. Not just “who wins.” But watching the market slowly absorb reality.

Why the Margin Market Mattered

One thing we dug into tonight that I think newer traders really need to understand: Sometimes the best value is not the winner itself. Sometimes it’s the magnitude.

By the time we got close to election night, Paxton outright had already become expensive. The easy value was mostly gone. But the margin markets still looked sleepy.

That’s where the “20+ point win” position came from. And again, this is where politics and math collide in a weirdly beautiful way. A 10-point race sounds massive in political media language. But mathematically? It’s just 55-45. You only need a relatively small shift in voters to suddenly create a giant-looking margin.

Once I started thinking through the Trump endorsement that way, the possibility of a blowout stopped looking crazy. The market still thought it was crazy. That’s why the price existed.

The Bigger Point

One thing I tried to stress on tonight’s show: This is not about “getting lucky” on random moonshot bets. If you come into these markets blindly chasing every low-probability outcome because you want 1000% returns every day, you’re going to get annihilated.

The point is identifying situations where the market probability itself feels fundamentally broken. Sometimes those are 60-cent positions. Sometimes they’re 8-cent positions. The percentage isn’t the story. The mispricing is.

And honestly, that’s what’s been the most fun about building this show with all of you so far.

People in the comments tonight were talking about turning losing streaks around. Paying for dinners. Building vacation money. Starting with five bucks and slowly figuring it out. That’s the ground-floor stuff I love.

Because most people still have no idea this world even exists yet.

Tonight’s episode goes much deeper into all of this, including:

• The exact logic behind the Paxton margin position

• Why I regretted not going even heavier earlier

• Every Texas position we took and how they settled

• The “Trump primary thesis” we keep riding

• Why politicians are suddenly panicking about prediction markets

• And why I think this entire industry is still absurdly early

Watch the full episode HERE if you missed it.

Listen & Subscribe to the Predictable Podcast HERE:

And if you were with us on the Texas positions Tuesday night…Welcome officially to the Pantheon of Victory!

Make sure to share your victory with friends, neighbors, strangers - anyone who will listen!

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