Scott Alexander

1.

This market, like many of them, is pretty stupid.

I like substantive markets.

This isn't substantive.

2.

The major prediction markets have a wildly undisciplined comms strategy where any attention is good attention, and they love implying all sorts of crazy Wild West stuff is going on to get attention.

3.

People do bet on things potentially subject to manipulation or insider trading.

But usually, markets like that, such as duration of press conference or stupid what-will-be-mentioned markets, are small, especially relative to the wealth of key decision-makers.

4.

Losers in markets are huge whiners, and the more frivolous and tiny their bets, the more likely they are to whine.

Sometimes in sports it's pretty egregious.

They'll get mad at a team for running out the clock when ahead, but under some spread they bet on.

5.

Lower quality financial news often doesn't pay much attention to quantity.

For example, dumb stories about how a decision maker has a conflict of interest because they've invested in an index fund which is 3% comprised of some company.

6.

Given the platform's undisciplined social media strategy of promote prediction market chatter no matter what kind of chatter it is, I don't think this tweet rises even to the status of lower-quality financial news.

Kaoshi's team, whatever their faults, are extraordinarily efficient at getting batched approvals of many near-identical markets with slight parameter variation.

I've seen Tarek speak about this on odd lots.