Trump Infection and Prediction Markets
Watch prediction markets to learn about volatility in crowd-sourced forecasts.
![Twitter avatar for @realDonaldTrump](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/realDonaldTrump.jpg)
I suspect a ploy. I guess “we’ll see what happens.”
What can we learn in the near term? Let’s use this as a learning experience to see how announcements like this affect prediction markets. It will be a good study of volatility in forecasting.
Here’s a screenshot of PredictIt’s election market outcome.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa01b4e6a-32c0-47e2-a515-2c8cdd99b954_2066x1208.png)
I’m not reading too much into this yet. Will be interesting to see how the time series looks over the next few days, particularly in terms of volume.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc4225b0c-afaf-4ef2-963b-7c2659be99f6_1372x1070.png)
According to PredictIt, the market hit the hardest was the timing of the supreme court confirmation.
![Twitter avatar for @PredictIt](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/PredictIt.jpg)
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FEjTZ9fQXgAAcLki.jpg)
Related
This gem from last year is a good thing to reread: Nassim Taleb’s Case Against Nate Silver Is Bad Math. I bring it up because some of the insights from that forecasting debate are relevant to thinking about prediction markets as engines for crowd-sourced forecasts.
Thoughts?