Nördnytt! 🤓Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets
- tekno45 - 346736 sekunder sedanhttps://x.com/sterlingcrispin/status/2043723823678382254
They admit no returns.
But it does seem like a fun project and nowhere does it say anything about returns or profits so not scammy imo just funny meme backed code
- slg - 342627 sekunder sedanIt's interesting that this is explicitly for non-sports markets because I see no reason why this would be less applicable there. Sports betters have long talked about that the winning strategy is usually to bet the under (i.e. the no) on most bets. The over (i.e. the yes) is generally a more exciting and fun outcome which causes it to attract more betters which in turns makes that side overpriced.
Like with this bot, I have no idea if that will still lead to actual positive returns. This might just be a remnant from a time when these betting lines were set less intelligently. But all things being equal, it seems logical that "boring" bets would have a better return in the long run than "exciting" bets as long as some betters are at least partially motivated by entertainment.
There's probably a lot of knowledge like this that sports betters have built up over decades that could apply to these new forms of non-sports gambling.
- cordwainersmith - 344615 sekunder sedanThe contrarian bet is fun but I wonder how it actually holds up. Prediction markets do tend to overprice dramatic outcomes, so "always bet no" isn't as dumb as it sounds. Would love to see real P&L over a few months, not just the thesis.
- wormpilled - 347793 sekunder sedanBasically arbitraging human imagination. People love coming up with fantastical concepts because they get attention, but the more exciting a market is, the less likely it is to actually happen. Reality is usually boring.
- krashidov - 338472 sekunder sedanIsn't this just picking up pennies on an active railroad track? You'll win small bets and then get run over once a long tail event completely wipes you out.
- logicallee - 343963 sekunder sedanDisclaimer: I contribute work as a political advisor and don't participate in betting markets as a market participant.
Nevertheless, Polymarket is a very interesting marketplace of sentiments and information, and it can be a very strong leading indicator of huge price movements in "real" markets like the NYSE, in part because it directly measures one factor of sentiment, i.e. whatever the prediction is about. Market sentiment determines market prices on very large and deep markets, too.
In the run-up to the election, when Trump was running against Biden, a betting market was a leading predictor of NASDAQ (a very deep, very liquid index of stocks). I wrote up the findings here: https://medium.com/@rviragh/does-the-stock-market-react-posi...
This indicator was the best one anyone has ever shown for NASDAQ for any signal, period. The signal was so strong it trumped all other signals and variances of any kind. Traders trading with just this signal and no other signal of any kind could have made practically an unlimited amount of money as long as the signal was intact. (Basically, until Biden dropped out.)
I myself didn't place any bet due to my role as a political advisor at the time, but the size of the correlation is still the biggest and most surprising one I've ever seen.
- sambaumann - 345181 sekunder sedanRelated: https://www.jbecker.dev/research/prediction-market-microstru... (previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46680515)
- kwar13 - 304850 sekunder sedanBetting "no" on an outcome, is bettering "yes" on ALL other possible outcomes. There is even an operation for it: https://docs.polymarket.com/advanced/neg-risk
- dheera - 342998 sekunder sedanHonest question: Why in all hell would you open source this?
I have been making money with a bot off a statistical anomaly in prediction markets lately. There is no way in hell I will open source it or tell you what that anomaly is because I have capacity back-tested it and there are so many players in the market; if all of HN and Github start downloading and use my code it WILL cease to work.
Put another way, your orders are helping move the market and price the market more efficiently; that's the market compensating you for pricing things better. If a thousand people run your strategy, prices will get moved to exactly the point where your strategy stops working. You effectively split that pie with a thousand people.
- throwaway2027 - 347608 sekunder sedanAlready priced in.
- hodder - 346700 sekunder sedanBasically, realized vol is lower than implied vol over time. Yes.
- tekno45 - 347916 sekunder sedanany stats on your returns so far?
- clayhacks - 340234 sekunder sedanSomeone needs to make a market on whether or not this is profitable
- 1attice - 341503 sekunder sedanToo bad we can't run this bot in the nineties. There seems to be quite a bit happening these days.
The stopped clock is right twice a day, but it reads noon and we're at half past three
- mzelling - 266880 sekunder sedanThe fact that the strategy makes zero returns suggests that Polymarket is unbiased — this is moderately interesting.
Has anybody looked into the repo in more detail? I imagine it's useful for infrastructure inspiration to build your own bot pursuing more differentiated trading strategies.
- Retr0id - 341482 sekunder sedanSomeone has (had?) a bot on Manifold that does the same thing, and it is profitable: https://manifold.markets/dcxStep
(Manifold doesn't use real money, so there's more "free money" lying around waiting to be picked up than on most real-money markets)
- thatnerd - 347554 sekunder sedanI think we've collectively DDoSed it. I'm getting a 504 timeout.
The author [page](https://github.com/sterlingcrispin) is there on github, but I can't even find his full list of his repos to confirm it's still there (I also get a 504 on that).
- dakolli - 314238 sekunder sedanThere's usually more edge baked into the No side in all prediction markets, because a little too much money usually gets poured in to yes, for obvious reasons. Its been this way in sports markets for decades, there's no fun in betting no so lots of dumb money ends up on Yes.
- fooker - 342665 sekunder sedanDon’t be gullible enough to fall for this bad math.
Say 70% of the time it resolves to ‘no’, you still don’t make money by blindly choosing ‘no’.
Guess why?
Hint: This strategy is also described with the macabre analogy: picking up pennies in front of a steamroller.
Do you want to pick up pennies in front of a steamroller?
- modeless - 341767 sekunder sedanPolymarket already has "Nothing Ever Happens" markets where you can bet on a set of events all not happening together. Because why not.
- chrisgd - 341801 sekunder sedanVery cool. The opposite of the black swan or turkey corollary. Every day the turkey gets fed and is happy until Thanksgiving rolls around.
- ZeroGravitas - 269231 sekunder sedanHas anyone opened a "Will the Bot buy "no" on this?" market yet?
- swyx - 344377 sekunder sedan> Heroku Workflow The shell helpers use either an explicit app name argument or HEROKU_APP_NAME.
nice to see heroku still alive...
- thetailrisk - 347192 sekunder sedanWhat's the data situation like if you wanted to backtest a model like this? Is it easily accessible?
- nzach - 346415 sekunder sedanIf this seems interesting for you remember that if you are putting $100 in a 99 to 1 bet you need to win 100 times to get $100 but only need to loose 1 time to loose $100.
And the chance of losing at least once in a 99% sure bet after 100 rounds is around 60%. Even if you reduce to 30 rounds it still is around 30%.
This may seem smart at first glance, but the math doesn't really checks out.
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- unreal37 - 331409 sekunder sedanSome things always happen too. You need to avoid certain terms.
- dsmurrell - 329743 sekunder sedanWhen you win you win small but when you lose you lose big? :)
- qbane - 342967 sekunder sedannull hypothesis bot
- declan_roberts - 341144 sekunder sedanI saw the Twitter meme and knew instantly he was going to be a good follow. Was not disappointed!
- daveswilson - 301430 sekunder sedanThe Jeraptha would find it boring. Just saying.
- dnnddidiej - 334462 sekunder sedanBetteridge's Bet
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- withinrafael - 340916 sekunder sedanVery confusing. Polymarket doesn't allow US use/users. How are folks in the US participating on Polymarket? (VPNs and the like reportedly don't help either due to KYC policies.)
- Toxygene - 324823 sekunder sedanThe idea was kind of amusing until I went to the GitHub page and was greeted with a Chudjak [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Crusius#In_popular_cul...