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Notes -
It is interesting to me that Trump's odds of winning the election are at 60% on Manifold (1), and Harris's are at 47% (2). How does this work and does it indicate insufficient liquidity?
(1) https://manifold.markets/ManifoldPolitics/will-trump-win-the-2024-election
(2) https://manifold.markets/ManifoldPolitics/if-joe-biden-drops-out-and-endorses
It's not a real market since it doesn't involve real money. People can make vanity bets on Harris at over 10% higher than their odds in a true market (Polymarket). The liquidity is also bad.
Just use Polymarket, which has had billions in real money bets and small spreads of around 0.1%.
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You're looking at the real vs play money market. Trump has 60% on sweepcash but only 52% on the play money market. The real money market tracks the other real money markets because people do arbitrage, but the play money market is only partially correlated, either because people believe the real money markts are being manipulated (by the crypto investor or by people hedging bets on other classes of market), or because people who want to bet in the real money market bet against their intended position in an attempt to manipulate their entry price lower.
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Sounds like a potential for some arbitrage. If my understanding of it is right, someone could buy 100 shares in Harris to lose (M53) and 100 shares in Trump to lose (M40) for a total of M93. Then win M100 regardless of which candidate wins.
When I originally wrote that comment I used dollars, before realising that Manifold doesn't use actual money. My guess is that this explains the discrepancy. Nobody really cares about arbitrage if the only prize is pretend internet points.
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