PMTrader: Predicting the Future, Taylor Swift, Trading Advice and More | TG Podcast
PMTrader turned a one-year prediction-market side project into roughly $50,000 of part-time profit, then quit his five-year CPA career to trade and create content full-time. He now reports making about $2,500-$3,000 a week; at sign-off, he says he is at roughly $60,000 and is publicly pursuing $100,000 “within the next couple of months.” He distinguishes himself from seven-figure traders such as Domer and Phantom: the pitch is a transparent climb from a smaller bankroll, not guru mythology.
His structural thesis is that prediction markets offer unusually favorable terrain because they are peer-to-peer and lack the 17-20% take he encountered in horse racing. In his news-trading framing, markets are live 24/7: when an earthquake occurs or another batch of election votes arrives, “someone has to be there to adjust the prices.” Deeper liquidity has so far enlarged the opportunity because newcomers and proliferating market types have arrived faster than prices have become efficient.
Mention markets are research markets disguised as novelty bets. PMTrader studies earnings-call transcripts back to 2020 and more than 100 past NFL games, then combines historical word frequencies with “vibes” and fresh context—such as Middle East news changing the probability that Trump uses a phrase. The host’s “fourth and inches” intuition illustrates the exploitable mistake: what feels obvious may be rare, although PMTrader candidly admits he is only even or slightly down on his recurring “inch—No” trade.
The Brian Armstrong episode exposed the reflexive risk that subjects can observe prediction markets and potentially influence outcomes. PMTrader avoided Coinbase because “I didn’t feel like I had an edge,” but acknowledged Armstrong reading out the listed words was “probably not great for mention markets in the long run.” His qualified counterpoint is that low-probability candidates still sometimes win, limiting the extent to which displayed odds become self-fulfilling.
Two trades capture the opportunity set: specialized knowledge and nearly resolved “bonds.” A Taylor Swift superfan with no prediction-market experience went approximately 10-for-12, earning PMTrader about $3,000; an EA mention market remained open even after an acquisition meant no earnings call would occur, letting him deploy about $7,000 and earn roughly $2,000. Thread Guy estimated perhaps 5% deal-failure risk and characterized the trade as offering around 30% per dollar.
PMTrader expects competition to compress today’s edges, but not eliminate them, because new and smaller markets continually reset the research race. He moved from eight months of trading two correlated markets into mention analysis and believes opportunity should remain abundant for at least three years, provided traders keep adapting. His broader method is top-down: compare logically linked contracts—such as Biden dropping out versus remaining the Democratic nominee—and trade inconsistencies rather than forecast every event from scratch.
For newcomers, his prescription is “start small,” “pick a niche,” calculate a fair value, and explain exactly why the crowd has mispriced the contract. Read the resolution rules, learn the order book before risking meaningful capital, and distrust anything that appears effortless: “If something seems too good to be true or too easy on these platforms…it probably is.” His next bet is content—pairing markets with niche experts, from Swift fans to Powell veterans or linguists studying Trump.
1. Lower market friction turned a CPA’s side hobby into a full-time pursuit
PMTrader came from poker and horse racing, where he was only “semi-profitable”; he specifically said horse racing removed roughly 17-20% from every wager. Prediction markets changed the equation: they were peer-to-peer, had “really no house edge,” and offered enough distinct inefficiencies that he wondered, “Why would I waste time” on the older formats?
He traded part-time while working five years as a CPA, including 60-80-hour filing-season weeks, and made roughly $50,000 during his first year. Three or four weeks before the interview, he quit, moved to New York, and began reporting weekly profits of approximately $2,500-$3,000 while planning to increase position sizes as his portfolio grows.
His self-positioning is deliberately modest beside Domer and Phantom, whose disclosed P&Ls reach seven figures. PMTrader says he is at about $60,000 and is “fully confident” he can reach $100,000 this year or within several months, but the attraction of his public “road to 100K” is watching that progression rather than inheriting a finished success story.
2. Faster information and expanding liquidity are creating more mispricing, not less
PMTrader’s simplest strategy is “news trading.” If a market asks whether a magnitude-7.0 earthquake will occur, the first trader to act once it does can buy Yes while the price is adjusting; election returns offer the same mechanism when reporting moves from 20% to 30% and a new batch reveals the direction of the race.
He described the earthquake trade as very low risk, while Thread Guy characterized the election example as somewhat risk-free. Execution and interpretation still matter. What has changed is capacity: trades that might have supported a few thousand dollars a year earlier now sit inside markets where traders such as Domer and Phantom can generate seven-figure P&Ls.
Contrary to the expectation that deeper liquidity automatically produces sharper pricing, PMTrader thinks the present phase may be easier. A single Powell-speech mention market can trade roughly $1.5 million, while Taylor Swift culture markets that once attracted $10,000 now reach millions; her album release generated tens of millions in volume.
The supply of contracts is widening just as quickly—from Trump and Powell speeches to NFL announcers, music, culture, tariffs, ceasefires, and local elections. PMTrader expects established markets to sharpen, but every newly invented format begins with a fresh problem: “Nobody knows what the true probabilities are.”
3. Mention-market edge combines transcript statistics, context and reflexivity
PMTrader rejects the idea that mentions are pure RNG. He cited one new trader turning $1,000 into $30,000 in a month, other traders documenting more than $300,000 primarily from mentions, and an eight-person “Mentions Cave” whose members each reportedly have P&Ls above $100,000—evidence he sees as stronger than his own hot streak.
The quantitative work starts with language history: earnings transcripts going back to 2020 and more than 100 past NFL games. The second input is “vibes”—current events that alter language probabilities. If Middle East news breaks before a Trump speech, for example, a phrase with a 50% historical frequency might deserve a 75-80% price.
Thread Guy pressed the much-memed “inch—No” position: surely “fourth and inches” or “third and inches” makes No a brutal trade. PMTrader’s answer was revealingly mixed. No initially cost about 20 cents and later rose toward 35-40 cents after he repeatedly put about $1,000 on it, yet he admitted he is probably even or slightly down rather than claiming a manufactured victory.
Reflexivity is the larger danger. Brian Armstrong reportedly looked at Coinbase’s mention contract and recited its listed words during the earnings call; PMTrader had skipped Coinbase because “I didn’t feel like I had an edge.” He called the event both viral and damaging—“documented in mention-market lore,” but also the perfect ammunition for critics—and expects it to blow over rather than delegitimize the category.
4. Taylor Swift and EA show two very different forms of informational advantage
For the Taylor Swift release, PMTrader invited a die-hard fan who had never traded prediction markets but understood music, concerts and Billboard Hot 100 mechanics. The experiment went approximately 10-for-12 and made PMTrader around $3,000; the fan missed two song-word long shots, including “Lover” near five-to-one, while correctly hitting several outcomes priced around 20%.
That result embodied his advice to seek domain expertise outside the normal trading crowd. He paid the guest $500 and argued that a genuine specialist can price a niche better than generalists even without market experience—a model he hopes to repeat with political, linguistic and central-bank experts.
The EA trade was closer to a “bond,” his term for high-probability shares overlooked because users prefer lottery-like payouts. After EA announced it was being acquired and taken private, PMTrader concluded there would be no earnings call; he bought roughly $7,000 of No shares on words that would not be mentioned, earning about $2,000.
He did not call the EA position absolutely risk-free. Thread Guy estimated roughly 5% deal-failure risk and said the trade offered around 30% per dollar. The mispricing persisted for two or three weeks even after PMTrader publicly explained it. Taylor Swift offered a similar anomaly: an outcome PMTrader viewed as “pretty much already 100% determined” still yielded 5-10%, partly because users misunderstood the dating language.
5. Durable edge requires selectivity, adaptation and an explicit theory of mispricing
PMTrader trades only around 10-15 markets in a typical week, concentrating where he believes he has an edge. Although mentions receive most attention, his original method was eight months of arbitrage across two correlated markets, exploiting prices that should align but do not.
He describes himself as top-down rather than model-heavy. Contracts on whether Biden would drop out and whether he would remain the Democratic nominee should have carried closely related probabilities; discrepancies offered a trade without requiring a ground-up political forecast. Thread Guy’s parallel to crypto was that more capital raises competition while simultaneously opening neglected verticals.
PMTrader agrees his current edges will erode, but believes smaller contracts, new formats and adaptation should preserve opportunity for at least three years. His own evolution—from arbitrage to transcript-driven mention analysis—is the template: “As long as you’re willing to adapt, you’ll always have edges.”
His beginner checklist is concrete: start small, learn the order book, choose a subject you already enjoy, assign fair value, explain why the public produced the wrong price, and read every resolution rule. Longer term, he sees a “content gold mine” in putting specialists beside live markets—from someone who has attended 50 Powell speeches to a linguist studying Trump or a political candidate confronting their own odds.
Full transcript
What's up, man? I'm so excited to be here. Thanks so much for having me on, Thread Guy.
Dude, I'm excited to have you on, man. I've been following your [__] pretty closely, I think, for the last couple of months. Honestly, man, no glaze: I'm a fan. I'm genuinely a fan. I think you put out some really good stuff.
I appreciate it, man. You look at prediction markets blowing up lately, and there really wasn't a lot of trading content on prediction markets. There was just a ton of content on how great they are. One thing I'll say right now is that if you look at crypto lately, I'm not a huge crypto person myself, but crypto seems like it's been tanking this last month, while my prediction market portfolio is doing pretty well.
Okay, look, again, I'm a crypto guy, obviously, but I think that the stream and what I want to focus on is that I just like markets. Anywhere where there's asymmetry and people are making money in markets, I want to bring them on. I want to talk about it. I want to cover it.
Can you start by giving us an introduction? Who are you, what do you do, and where did you come from?
Yeah, definitely. I've traded on prediction markets for about a year now. My original background was that I was a CPA for about 5 years, so I was just doing this on the side. I got obsessed with it.
What really drew me to it was that originally, I played a lot of poker. I was also into horse racing and trying to find an advantage with betting on horse races. When I discovered prediction markets around the last election cycle, it drew me in. I was completely obsessed.
Since discovering them a year ago, I'm always on them and researching trades. Just 3 or 4 weeks ago, I actually quit my job. I have moving boxes back here because I just moved to New York. Now I'm going to be doing trading content full-time and diving in.
You've seen the growth in the prediction market space lately. It's going parabolic.
Were you profitable in horse racing?
I was semi-profitable. It's really hard because in horse racing, the house will take 17% to 20% of every bet that someone places. You can imagine that even though it's peer-to-peer and you're betting against other people, it's so difficult to find an edge.
That's why I think prediction markets, once I discovered them, made me wonder why I would waste time on poker, horse racing, and all these other avenues when you have this platform where there's really no house edge. You're not even betting against a house. It's all peer-to-peer.
It just sucked me in. There are so many edges that you can find on prediction markets that I love them.
17% to 20% is crazy. That's egregious. That's insulting.
Yeah, 100%. You look at sportsbooks as well and the vig that they'll take on things. The offering that you get on prediction markets is so much more consumer-friendly. If you're trying to be profitable over the long run, there are so many more advantages to be found because it's really not stacked against you.
Okay, set the stage for me a little bit here, and we'll work backwards. You came on and said crypto looks like [?]. I'm all-in on prediction markets, which is probably true of both of these things.
What is your prediction-market yearly P&L since you went all-in on prediction markets about a year ago?
A year ago, I was doing this part-time. I had basically made about $50K on the side doing this on the weekends. I had a super-brutal-schedule job, so I was working 60 to 80 hours a week during filing times.
Since going full-time—and I document all this live—I've been making about $2.5K to $3K a week. I think I'm really going to start ramping up as my portfolio grows and I add more size.
It was a fun side hobby for me originally, and I got some extra income. $50K for me on the side was pretty great on top of my regular job. Now I'm making $3K a week and trying to really scale that up. I think I'll be able to. We'll see.
I have a lot of big, long-term aspirations. You had DOER on, you had Phantom on. These are legendary traders, all with 7-figure P&Ls. That's not me, and I'm open about that. I have a public profile, but I think the appeal is that there are so many new people getting into the space.
I'm going to share and let people follow along with my journey of going from a small P&L to running it up. I'm very confident I'm going to hit $100K this year or within the next couple of months.
$3K a week is pretty good. You don't have to defend that. That's impressive.
I have an audience of traders. We call them crypto traders—we can call them whatever they want—but they're traders. They're people who are familiar with markets and like to trade. I think every person watching this stream knows what prediction markets are, but very few of them are actually taking risk and opening positions.
For most people, there's this feeling of, "Yes, it's interesting. Yes, I agree. Paulie, Kowi, all these things are worth a ton of money. They're going to be huge. But I have no idea what to trade, where to start, or how to approach these things. I get crypto. I get stocks. I don't get prediction markets."
What do you focus on right now? What are you focused on? What type of markets are you trading?
I'll trade almost any market. If you follow my content lately, it's been heavily focused on mention markets because I think they're great for content. I also think that when you think about edges, there are so many edges to be had.
For newcomers to the space, I'll skip some of the basics of prediction markets, but there are really so many ways to profit. If I were to list some strategies to get people thinking about real-world applications, the number one is what I define as news trading.
Similar to crypto markets, I imagine prediction markets are live 24/7. As new information comes out, someone has to be there to adjust the prices for that new information.
Let's think about a market for whether there will be an earthquake above 7.0 magnitude. As soon as a magnitude-7.0 earthquake happens—apologies to anyone impacted by an earthquake—whoever is first to buy all those yes shares on that market and react to the new information is going to profit massively at very low risk.
That's one application of news trading. You can also think about yesterday, for anyone who follows the elections. Vote totals are coming out in batches, so you'll have the first round of votes, but there's still a lot of uncertainty. Maybe 20% is reported. What's going to happen?
A minute later, if 30% is reported and you can see where things swung, if you're the first to react to that new information, you can profit in a somewhat risk-free manner. The liquidity is getting deep enough that maybe a year ago this was something where you could make a few thousand dollars, but Domer and Phantom are making 7 figures.
How much has the game changed since you started actually taking positions a year ago?
I'd say the biggest thing is that liquidity is getting so much deeper. You would think deeper liquidity would mean sharper market participants, but I think it's almost easier to find edges now than it was even a year ago.
With all the newcomers, there are still a lot of edges. With deeper liquidity on these markets, the amounts you can make are also larger. With mention markets, doing all these mention streams, we're seeing them do $1.5 million in volume on a Powell speech in a given day.
I guess you would think it would get more difficult as liquidity and volumes have increased, but I've seen the opposite. There are still so many edges to be found.
The other thing that's changing is that new market offerings are expanding at a crazy rate. I play mention markets, right? These used to just be Trump and Powell speeches. Now you have mention markets for an NFL announcer and all kinds of different events.
You look at culture markets and Taylor Swift. These are things that a year ago would do $10,000 in volume. Now they're doing millions. The Taylor Swift album release did tens of millions in volume. I think the big things are new market offerings and deeper liquidity, which is beneficial to all traders.
I know you love that NFL announcer mention market.
I want to ask about the mention market stuff because it's entertaining. I watch your content on the mention markets. I think it's entertaining. I tune into the stream sometimes, and I watch your clips. I'm aware of you because of the things you're posting.
Do you actually think these mention markets can be profitable long-term, or is it just full RNG? You're definitely persuading people to trade these things. Are there people who are consistently hitting, and do you think that can continue to exist?
I think 100% that you can be profitable long-term with mention markets. Personally, I'd say mentions are one of the top markets in terms of being profitable and finding edges because the liquidity isn't necessarily as deep. You might not be making $1 million like Domer does on his political markets, but the edges you can have are significant.
There's another person—I think esoteric catboy is his Twitter name, which is a funny name—who just started a month ago. With all the craze around mention markets, he turned $1K into $30K.
Maybe he's on a hot streak. I don't think so. I think he's just a sharp player because he talks about a lot of his trades. And I'll say personally, I've made $60K. A lot of that's come from mentions, but I have a lot of chats I'm in talking with other mention-market sharps, and some of these people have documented $300K-plus P&Ls in the last year, primarily on mention markets.
This is over a long period of time.
Okay. Okay, so one thing I think is really interesting, tailing off the mention-market stuff, is that obviously real-world events affect odds on prediction markets. Something happens in the real world, and the odds move. The flip side of that is prediction-market odds potentially influencing real-world outcomes, which is kind of dystopian and [__], but real and probably going to happen.
An example that maybe sets the foundation for it was the Brian Armstrong Coinbase earnings call the other day, where he's on the most important call on his calendar and he's staring at prediction-market odds on what he's going to say. In my head, it probably was pretty harmless: someone said it in his company Slack, he looked at it, laughed, chuckled a little bit, and then said the words. But you could extrapolate this into much more significant real-world outcomes. What did you think about the Brian Armstrong market, and did you make or lose money?
The Brian Armstrong one was crazy, and I actually played almost all the earnings calls that day. I had all my picks the morning of. You can go back to that one—I was so lucky to say, “I'm not going to play Coinbase earnings,” because I didn't feel like I had an edge. It's very company-specific, so I got lucky not to play it there. I probably would have gotten killed. I play a lot of “no” shares on words, but that was crazy.
People in the mention-market space have been talking about this for a long time, knowing that this was somewhat inevitable and might happen sometime. But none of us thought this was going to happen on an earnings call. Of all things. And on Coinbase, where they're getting involved in the prediction-market space, you would think they'd want to not get involved in markets. So I think it was very surprising that it came on an earnings call.
A lot of people were thinking it could happen on South Park when they did that big episode.
That would have been a good one for it.
Yes.
Yeah. But obviously, it's not a great thing when stuff like this happens. People have talked about this with elections, too. If you look at the election odds, is that going to encourage people? But if we look at the New York City mayoral race, mom Donnie was a heavy favorite now, but back in the primaries, he was a heavy underdog and still pulled ahead.
There are so many instances of 1% underdogs coming back and winning on these platforms that maybe there is a little bit where it's going to self-confirm—confirmation bias with the markets. But there are enough counterpoints that I don't think it'll become a big issue.
Okay. So, actually, I'll ask you this one first. Do you think that Brian Armstrong going on the earnings call and rattling off every name on the benchmark market illegitimizes prediction markets and makes them look like a joke, or do you think it further solidifies their impact on culture?
I don't want to give you a non-answer and say a mix of both. What I'll say about it is that it's a very viral moment. It's going to be documented in mention-market lore for a long time, and I'm sure those clips are going to bring in a ton of new users.
I think there is a negative aspect to that, for sure, which is that all the people who have been talking about this for the longest time and saying mention markets are dumb—this is their perfect quote-tweet moment. So I think Atlanta is probably not great for mention markets in the long run, but I think it's something that'll just blow over. There is no reality in which he actually did this with negative intent. I think it'll blow over.
I love how you call it the mention-market space. That's awesome. I think that's awesome. It's like its own developing niche.
Yeah. I have a Discord that I'm in called the Mentions Cave. It's about 8 mention traders, all with $100K-plus P&Ls. We're all talking about it. I'm lucky they let me in there because they're way sharper than me. But going back to your point on whether you can actually profit in the long run, I have absolutely no doubt, knowing these people.
I love that. Okay, so obviously you're not going to burn your edges and whatnot, but I'm curious: when I asked you about Coinbase and Brian Armstrong, you said the only market you didn't play was Coinbase earnings because you didn't feel like you had an edge. Why do you feel like you have an edge in the mention markets that you do play?
Yeah, that's a great question. I did write an article on profiting on mentions for anyone who's curious. I would define edges in mention markets as really relating to two things.
First, you need to do your research with transcripts. For every mention market I'm playing, maybe I'll post a [__] post pretending like I'm just taking a word for some reason, but in reality I'm looking at historical transcripts for every earnings call going back to 2020. For the NFL announcer markets, I'm looking at 100-plus previous NFL games. The word frequencies really—
You're reading transcripts from hundreds of old NFL games?
Yeah. And it's not easy to get that data because they don't publish it. But you can think about how to find edges. One part is looking at historical frequencies of words, and a lot of people are finding this out. It's obvious, right?
Then there's the second part, which is vibes. Going back to real-world news impacting things, if Trump's going to give a speech on Monday and something happens in the Middle East, the odds of him saying “Middle East” might have been 50% in previous speeches. Now you've got to price that higher, at 75% or 80%. So it's a mix of the quantitative side—looking at historical word frequencies—and vibes, just adjusting to news and new information.
Whoa. So you are reading that. Let me ask you this: are you looking only at Joe Buck transcripts? I don't know who plays tomorrow, but the Rams and Eagles play tomorrow, and Joe Buck is announcing.
That's a good point. How detailed do you want to go? There are a lot of levels you can use. Personally, for the NFL markets, I'm not looking specifically at announcers. I'm looking at whether it's a Monday Night Football game or a Thursday Night Football game. We're starting to, but these NFL announcer markets have only been around for a few weeks.
Going back to why I love prediction markets: they launch an NFL announcer market, and something like this has never existed before, so nobody knows what the true probabilities are for these words. Whoever is clever enough to build out their own probability for all these words is going to profit massively. Give it more time, and these markets become more efficient naturally because you're getting more data and people are researching them more.
With the NFL announcer markets, I'm always on “inch.” No, yes, it's a little bit of a meme, but I think it's a profitable trade long term.
Are you profitable on “inch”? No, because I feel like that's a brutal one.
I think I'm about even on “inch, no,” and it's because I got lucky that I wasn't able to play it every time. I feel like I'm maybe down or even, but I'm probably not up.
That's a great meme. What are the odds on “no,” generally?
The first time they launched the market, you could buy “inch” and “no” at about 20 cents, which was a steal. Now it's closer to 35, almost 40 cents, since I put about a grand on it every time they have a game.
“Inches” doesn't count. It's a different word, right?
“Inches” counts. Plurals count.
Dude, I feel like that's a brutal one. Fourth and inches, third and inches—every time, you're getting cooked on that.
That's the best part. When we're talking about edges, you want to have these markets where the crowd is immediately going to say, “Oh my gosh, just looking at this, I think ‘inch’ is going to be said.”
A great example of this is a Spotify market: who's the top Spotify artist this year? Gayton Dugas, another big trader, talks a lot about this. Naturally, when people think of the top Spotify artist, everyone's going to think Taylor Swift, right?
But if you dig a little deeper, it's probably going to be Bad Bunny.
The odds kind of reflect that now, but they didn't for a while. Markets like that, where your first reaction is, “It’s got to be this person,” but if you dig a little deeper, that’s another place you can find a lot of edges.
Ry Fuzzy’s in the chat. He says, “Mandela effect: Thread Guy thinks fourth-and-inches always happens, but it never happens.” Interesting.
Yeah, interesting. Look—
Fourth-and-1, fourth-and-a-couple, fourth-and-less-than-a-yard. They get you there. Let me ask you this: is this a Domer thing? How much of your trading is technical? In sports and poker, everyone has the solvers and the GTO strategy. Everyone’s using the solvers, and it comes down to a math equation. A lot of people basically put it into math.
How much of what you’re doing in prediction-market trading is technical? You have the data, you have the tech, and you’re just listening to the models versus going off your own research and mental thought process?
Yeah, I would say for me, I’m probably less data-heavy. I would call myself what people use in the sports-betting world—and they also use it in prediction markets—as a “bottoms-up” person. Those are people who are very technical and build their own models. Probably Domer is in that category. He could answer better, but Gayen, people like that.
And then there are top-down people who are—
I would define myself as top-down. I don’t tend to be super deep in the data, but I’m looking at how other markets are priced in relation to one another. Something to think about there is, for example, last year, if you were looking at “Will Biden drop out?” and “Will Biden be the Democratic nominee?” Those should be priced roughly the same, right? Because if Biden hadn’t dropped out of the race, then he obviously— you know what I mean?
That’s where I’m probably more top-down and less analytical. But on mentions, I will get deep into the data. The transcript thing is awesome. I love that.
That is awesome. Okay, you answered my DM in 30 seconds, and I was like, “Oh, this kid’s a freak.” You answered my DM in literally 30 seconds both times, which is really impressive. I’m pretty bad at that, so I know you’re on top of it.
Let me ask you this as a setup: how many open markets—or I don’t know, how many markets a week—do you think you’re trading? Probably not that many.
I would say maybe—this is going to sound really low—but maybe 10 to 15. Obviously, it depends a little bit. We had the New York City election yesterday and the New Jersey election, so I was in on every race, all these different markets. I was streaming the whole thing live with a really solid political analyst. He made $20K live on the stream on all those trades.
I’m probably in fewer markets, but I’m usually playing almost every mentions market if it has decent liquidity. I’m trying to branch out more into different markets. Culture is a big one, and politics is another, but it’s risky, right? You want to trade in markets where you have an edge.
For everyone watching who wants to get into prediction markets, think about a niche that you’re really interested in where you might have unique information, so you could price these markets better than the general public. Crypto markets are a great example. I assume a lot of your audience is into crypto, so maybe there’s an angle to come in on crypto markets and use some of your knowledge there.
So, you’re trading 10 to 15% of markets, which is—no, it doesn’t sound low. That’s a lot.
10 to 15 markets in a week, I guess. Not—
Okay, okay. I thought you meant 10 to 15%. Still, I don’t think that’s low. Maybe lower than I thought, but not that low.
What does your day-to-day news flow and time spent look like? How much time are you spending researching markets, and what are you doing?
Right now, honestly, probably 70% to 75% of my time is all content, trying to create content all day. Before, if I was doing this full-time trading, my day-to-day would look way different. Now I’m spending a ton of time clipping and editing, and I’m new to all this stuff.
I don’t have a content background. I was just an accountant. I’m on Twitter and doing all this stuff, and I don’t know what’s going on.
In a given day, I’m staying on top of mentions markets. In terms of news, White House reporters are a big thing. I have all their notifications on to stay on top of Caroline Leit speeches. You want to think about what’s going to impact the markets. I’m following any Truth Social posts from Trump, obviously. I have a few specific X accounts that I follow, too.
Going back to news trading, it’s about getting good information flow. Twitter is really great for having a few accounts that you set up notifications for—things that can impact markets. There are all these markets on whether there will be a tariff on a given day, whether there will be a ceasefire, or whatever. Trump is frequently going to post on Truth Social, and that’s going to impact tariff markets and all these things.
Going back to being the first to react, if you set up good information flow and have good notifications, you—
Honestly, it’s cool to hear. You’re crushing it with the content, by the way. When did you start?
I’ve actually been making content for about a year, but again, I was working full-time. When I say “making content,” I would record a 10-minute video and be like, “Screw this. I’m not going to edit this at all.” I would just upload it.
But maybe 5 or 6 weeks ago, I really started going full-time content.
Damn. GG, bro. Five or 6 weeks? That’s insane. GG.
Do you feel like, as this scene gets more competitive, more liquidity flows in, and there are more traders, your edge gets eroded and it’s going to be harder for you to make money?
I think that’s a good point. If I had to give a simple answer, I’d say yes. Naturally, these markets are going to get sharper. But there are now thousands of markets, so it’s never going to be the case that every single market has $100 million in liquidity or volume.
There are always going to be smaller markets on the edges that are naturally inefficient. As they’re making new markets on all these platforms, going back to the announcer market, they drop a new market that doesn’t have any historical data. That’s an opportunity where, if you’re quick and smart about how you price it yourself, there’s always going to be opportunity.
I’m confident that for the next 3 years, even as these things go parabolic, there are going to be tons of edges. You just have to be willing to adapt and change your strategy. I’ve gone through so many different trading strategies that I primarily focus on now. I’m actually doing analysis on what words will be said. Before, I was all arbitrage for about 8 months, trading 2 different markets that were correlated.
As long as you’re willing to adapt, you’ll always have edges.
Yeah, that’s the thing. I think the same thing happened in crypto, too. More people come in, so it gets more competitive. But as more people come in and it gets more competitive, more verticals open, so there are more things that the sharps aren’t paying attention to. There are more inefficiencies in the market because there are more people and more money.
Yeah, 100%. You’re seeing volumes go parabolic, right? But I just think there are always going to be these inefficiencies. They’re always going to be rolling out new types of markets, and if you continue to adapt, you’ll always be able to profit on these platforms.
Tell me about your Taylor Swift trade and stream.
That [__] was amazing.
That was one of my favorite all-time streams. I brought on, for those who aren’t familiar, a Swiftie megafan. In reality, this was someone I knew in real life who had never been on a prediction market, but follows music religiously and could tell you exactly how the Billboard Hot 100 does its rankings.
He’s also a huge fan of Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter. He’s at a concert every weekend. People are always talking about whether you can really profit over the long run on prediction markets or how hard it is to find edges. I thought, “Let me bring on a megafan of Taylor Swift who’s never traded on these platforms. I’m just going to walk through all the Taylor Swift markets, hear what he has to say, and see how it performs.”
I was confident going into this that he would have an edge over the general market. I marketed it as just a Swiftie fan, and we went, I want to say, 10 for 12. I think I made $3,000 just tailing everything he gave for Taylor Swift.
What was he wrong on?
He was wrong on the long shots for what words Taylor Swift would say in her song. “Lover” was one. We took it at around 5-to-1. The only things he lost on were two longer shots, but he also hit on a ton of things that were priced at around 20%. So, he hit on a bunch of long shots, too.
That stream was a [__] movie. I didn’t watch too much other than seeing that you were doing it and seeing what the setup was and who it was. Did you give him some money for hitting?
Yes. I posted this—I gave him $500. He said he’s now going to start trading, but I haven’t heard any update. Hopefully, he does.
But last night’s stream, too, I loved being in person and meeting other people.
That was sick, too, by the way. Who was there?
It was me, and Ben was my co-host. He’s a big political trader. Phantom Bets also came in, who you know, and he hit 50K shares live—$25,000—literally right in front of us.
So here I was, going back to why I’m defensive about $60K profit. I’m surrounded by these big traders. That was electric, and it’s one of the main reasons I’m so excited to be in New York: the opportunity to do things in person.
I have my room and my moving boxes behind me, but I’m going to build out some semblance of a studio. Hopefully, I’ll have a couch there and be able to have in-person guests come.
And you think about prediction-market content, right? It’s like the verticals you can go under. I’ve started with prediction-market streams, which are kind of fun and viral-content-oriented, but long term, there are so many verticals to expand into.
You think about these political races. Someone should be interviewing a candidate or something like that, with how big prediction markets are going to get. All the different types of markets—culture and all these things—it’s a content gold mine. That’s what I’m trying to go fully into.
You’re going to blow up huge, if you haven’t already. I’m a fan.
So, tell me this as sort of a wrap-up: what do you tell people who are interested in prediction markets, whether they’re experienced traders or not? Where do you start? How do you get the lay of the land, and how do you start to think about how you could develop an edge?
The first thing I would say to anyone starting is: start small, or even just watch the markets. When you trade on prediction markets, there’s going to be new stuff for a lot of people, like an order book. Some people might not know how to interact with an order book, especially if they’re coming from a sports background.
Starting small means that if you make mistakes interacting with features like that, you’re not going to lose your whole bankroll.
Number 2, I would say, is pick a niche. Ideally, make it something that you really enjoy. If you love music, focus on culture markets. If you love politics, focus on political markets. If you follow your local politics, you can follow a mayoral race or something like that. That’s going to be a smaller market, maybe less efficient.
Picking a niche and starting small are the 2 big things. Then there’s the mindset. Going back to thinking in inches, whenever you’re entering a trade, my advice would be to think about why you’re entering the trade and why you think it’s mispriced. Ideally, assign your own fair value.
Then also think about why it’s mispriced. Go the extra step and ask: what is the general public thinking that’s causing this to be at 50% when I think it should be 70%? Just go a level deeper. Don’t oversimplify, and always think in multiple steps.
If something seems too good to be true or too easy on these platforms, it probably is. There’s probably a reason it’s priced where it is. Always read the contracts and the resolution rules to make sure you fully understand all the potential outcomes.
Have you ever traded crypto?
Oh my gosh. I was in crypto back in 2017, when I was about to go into college. I was 18 and working at a grocery store in the summer, so I had a little bit of money. That was during the ICO craze.
I bought Bitcoin, then I started trading some of the ICOs. I basically rounded the few grand that I had that summer. But my brother, who got into it with me, stuck with it, and he’s 100X’d what he started with. He got into some crazy stuff.
I actually want to get into crypto long term. I feel like it would be funny, because you have all these crypto people going into prediction markets, and me being a Web2, non-crypto guy, it would be funny to transition into asking, “Can I make money trading crypto?”
We could do some fun crossover content. You’d be a demon with a [__] Phantom wallet and a Salana address.
Phantom’s in the chat telling me to ask you about the EA earnings call.
The EA earnings call was a super fun one. I made a post the other day about “bonds” on prediction markets, which is a term you’ll hear in the prediction-market space a lot.
The thesis is that everybody wants long shots. They want 100X. So, at a high level, things trading at 85 or 90 cents on prediction markets are frequently going to be mispriced. I’m not saying to just buy anything at 90%. Obviously, you need to do your research.
With the EA earnings call, TL;DR, EA announced that they were getting acquired and being taken private. Because of that, there would be no earnings call, and there was a mention market for what EA would say on its earnings call.
Going back to bonds, I bought about $7,000 of all these words not being mentioned on the earnings call, because the earnings call wasn’t happening. It’s crazy, the things that will happen on prediction markets.
How much did you make?
I made around $2,000 on that, virtually risk-free.
Yeah, I mean, there was a small risk that the deal could somewhat fall through—maybe 5%—but I’m getting 30% on every dollar.
That’s a sick trade.
Going back to whether you can find edges, think about how crazy that opportunity was. What’s insane is that I covered it on stream. Someone on stream brought it up and told me to research it. This was over a month ago.
Even after showing people on stream, for the next 2 or 3 weeks I was still able to load up on my position. Somehow, people still weren’t loading up on it. It’s bizarre.
That’s a fucking sick trade. I love that trade.
Opportunities like that, I’m not joking, are everywhere. You just need to look and research.
With the Taylor Swift album release, there were a ton of posts about this from top traders who had close to $1 million. I think Domer had a huge position.
He was talking about it. He said 50% of his portfolio was in Taylor Swift.
Yeah, and I had a good amount on that, too. To my understanding, that event was pretty much already 100% determined, and you could still get a free 5% or 10% on your money because people were either misunderstanding it or there was confusion about how the markets were dated.
My general point is that the opportunities you can find are incredible. And on the point about Domer, he had, we were saying, $1 million down on something like that. So there was liquidity. It’s bizarre.
That is a fucking sick trade, dude. Nice trade on that.
So, what’s next for you? What’s your plan?
I’m building out this studio here. The goal is to have a lot of in-person guests coming on to be interviewed. They could be top traders, but honestly, I want to have experts on.
Going back to how many markets there are on prediction markets—thousands—I feel like there are so many niche experts I could find who would be easy to bring on. Maybe they don’t have a big following or anything, but they’re complete experts in that market.
You can think about a Powell speech. Could I bring on somebody who has attended 50 of these Powell speeches and asked him questions in the past, and get his take on what’s happening? Could I bring on a linguist who studies Trump and his mannerisms to talk about what Trump will say?
There are so many angles. I want to bring on niche experts. Long term, it would obviously be great to have a political candidate on in a race and ask them, “Here’s where your odds are. What do you say about that?”
I’m a fan. I think that’s a sick plan.
Do you have a sign-off? Anything you want to show? Anything you think people should do or look at? Drop your YouTube link, your Twitter, like—
Yeah. Follow me on Twitter. I'm doing a road to 100K, documenting all my trades, all my positions, and profits publicly. If you're a new user on prediction markets, I think it's a great thing to follow because I'm only at 60K, but we're going to run it up. I'm fully confident in that.
I'm expanding to YouTube and all that other stuff, but I'm already trying to clip things for Twitter. I'm like, “Oh my gosh.” But I'm going to get the vertical clips going on Shorts and TikTok soon. Don't worry.
I have faith, bro. Trust me, I see the vision, dude. I think you're sick, man. Keep doing what you're doing. Thanks for coming on. When you hit 100K or whatever, come back. We'll rip a part two. And I'm looking forward to following, bro.
All right, let's do it. Thank you so much for having me on.
Of course, brother. Have a good one.