This is not surprising if you know how bookies price bets and why they move the line. This indicates they are still taking wagers. They are simply enticing suckers.
Predictit also has a bunch of crazy markets, like "Which party will control the House after 2020 election?" at 91 cents for Republicans. Seriously, there is literally no universe where both Republicans overturn the results of 35 house seat elections AND a company like Predictit is still around to pay the winners of that bet their $.91! There basically has to be a civil war that ends the country for that to happen, at which point winning your bet isn't gonna matter! Interestingly "Will Donald Trump win any state he lost in 2016?" is at 89 cents. That one also is wildly implausible, but not nearly as wildly implausible as the House bet, yet it's priced nearly the same? Unfortunately you're limited to $850 in bets per market there so although I've got them all maxed out I'll get more satisfaction out of relieving the delusional Trump supporters of their money than actually making anything. The really depressing thing to me is what this says about the country. There are clearly a significant number of my fellow citizens who truly believe a batshit crazy alternate reality to the point they are willing to put their money on the line to demonstrate support of that belief. That is super depressing to me.
That's fake news. It's currently 93 cents for Democrats. It dropped to 3 cents for Republicans on election night. It's gone up slightly because people don't want to wait for the outcome to settle. They want to pull their money out now, probably to gamble it on the Bitcoin rally and are willing to take a little less in order to get their money sooner. PredictIt charges a 5% withdrawal fee and I think they take off 15% of the winnings. So when you consider that, 94 cents is a fair price to pull the money out now. You should know this. That's not all Trump supporters...I did not vote for Biden, but placed PredictIt bets on Biden winning (and a couple other gambles related to that theme). Also did the same thing in 2018 for the midterms, bet on Democrats taking the house. It's called hedging.
That's what I was thought as well. Like betting on a sports team not to cover spread - doesn't mean at the same time you think it will lose.
I just checked and as of now it's $.90 buy / $.89 sell on "Which party will control the House after 2020 election?" For Republicans. Which means if I put in $100 I would make $10 on the bet, give up $1.50 to their commission, and give up $5.00 to the withdraw fee assuming I just put money in for this bet. That leaves me with a 3.50 profit if you ignore the 100 frequent flier miles or $1.00 in cash back I get depending on which credit card I use. The bet closes when the 117th congress meets on Jan 3rd, so about 12% of a year away. That gets me an annualized return of 29%, or 37.5% if you count my $1 in cash back from my card. If I was just using funds I kept in my Predictit account to take advantage of these rubes over and over so I didn't really pay that 5% withdraw fee on every transaction it goes up to an annualized return in the 75% range. Keep in mind, we're talking about a time when people are willing to invest in the IB "notes" program for a .5% annualized return! Certainly the $850 limit per product has something to do with what is clearly an arbitrage opportunity. And maybe some profit taking, although you don't see anyone ever giving up 29-75% annualized returns to sell any other product in the real markets in order to have their money back to reinvest in something else. For example, if a stock dives and makes formerly ATM puts now deep ITM puts you can't ever buy those at a discount to intrinsic because people want to get their profits sooner. At the end of the day I don't think you can just hand wave away a 29-75% annualized return by attributing it to fees and stuff, there have to be a significant number of people (given the $850 limit per person) who actually truly believe in an alternate reality fairy tale land where Republicans won the House in 2020.
It's not a fair comparison because in the options market there is an ability to hedge using the underlying while in the world of "bets" there is nothing like that. Hedging only makes sense if you can do size that's relevant to your net risk. My understanding is that predictit has a 1k limit or something like that so what's the point?
For sure not an exact comparison. But basically there's nowhere in the real market world where anyone gives up double digit annualized returns just to recycle their money early to invest in something else. Kind of blows up the whole time value of money concept, especially in a world where you could just borrow at low single digit rates if you really had another great opportunity.