Silver Linings

Since Jimmy Carter's win in 1976, only one underdog going into Election Day has won the Presidency, and last night the favourite won again. 

Here are the prices on previous elections courtesy of the Sports Odds History site: 

The "French Trump Whale" called it correctly, put his money where his mouth was and made millions while I, once again, managed to lose money betting on politics. 

However, the financial markets appear to be reacting positively to the result, so I shall pretend that my bet on Harris was a hedge, and focus on the silver lining of my Bitcoin holding hitting a new all-time high. Hopefully Tesla will also benefit from Elon Musk's role with the Trump campaign, and the US futures look green across the board, especially the Russell 2000 which is comprised of smaller companies who will benefit from Trump's promised tariffs. 

While it wasn't a market of quite so much significance to the world, we did have a winner in the NHL last night, a qualifier in two systems, and after a slow start the season has picked up with an overall ROI slightly above 25%.

In the NBA, the 'Overs on High Totals' system has started the new season positively too, with an 8-4 record to date and two more selections tonight, but the new 'Unders' system is 0-2 so far. 

Next Stop - White House or Prison?

Following up on my last post "Record Breaking" and one of my subscribers sent me an email containing some interesting data. Martin wrote:

I enjoyed your blog post 'Record Breaking' and was having a poke around myself so thought I would share my spreadsheet of Betfair ticks.

It doesn't look like much of that £1.4m @ 1.8 traded in the morning or afternoon, but £6m traded between 7 and 8pm, including £3.6m at 19:25-19:26.

Obviously Betfair is counting back and laid stakes so is double counting really, but that's still huge. I noticed the spike on their crappy charts on Sunday.

That's a lot of money and the backer is in a good position right now with Trump down to 1.59 / 1.6 at the time of writing.

Bogdan R left a comment on the same post asking:

How low did Trump trade in 2020? I remember something around 1.25. I'm not overly confident on Harris @2.30-2.40, but I'm tempted to leave a few lay orders on Trump, something like 1.40/1.30/1.20.

I looked back at my posts from four years ago, and in one of them I wrote: 

Trump's defeat is made all the sweeter given that on Tuesday night, with his odds as short as 1.24, he almost certainly thought he had won. 

Bogdan has a good memory.

Some of you may have heard about the trader known as "French Trump Whale" who had, at the time of this interview, bet $45MM on Trump to win the election.  

It promises to be an interesting night as the results start to come in.  Fireworks expected...

Record Breaking

I believe I'm right in saying that the largest market in Betfair's history to date is currently 2020's "Next President" market, in which around £125MM was traded up to and including Election Day before another £75MM was added during the period leading up to the Electoral College meeting in mid-December.

The total for the 2024 "Election Winner" market is currently at £154MM, and it's unlikely to be closed any time soon if Trump is the losing candidate.

This market will be settled once both the projected winner is announced by the Associated Press and the losing candidate concedes. If the losing candidate does not concede, or if there is any uncertainty around the result (for instance, caused by recounts and/or potential legal challenges), then the market will be settled on the winner decided by Congress, on the date on which the Electoral College votes are counted in a joint session of Congress.

Earlier today (Sunday) there was a large amount looking to back Trump, a sum that I can't recall ever seeing before. The market moved to 1.8 / 1.81 but whether that huge amount was mostly matched or cancelled isn't clear but over £7MM has now traded at 1.8, far more than the amount traded at either 1.79 or 1.81. 

That Trump is favourite at all is surprising to me, although I'm trying to learn my lesson after misreading the 2016 Brexit and US Presidential Elections. I've layed Trump at various prices over the past few weeks, and this may not age well, but my gut feeling is that Kamala Harris will ultimately win fairly comfortably.

Neither Trump or his campaign are sounding confident, he looks physically exhausted and flat, and the latest polls are generally good for Harris. I could cash out for a nice profit, but I'm going to let this run. It could be running for a while though as Trump ramps up his "stolen election" claims and provokes civil unrest. Interesting times.