Man's Search For Edge
A fine line between degenerate gambling and smart speculation
Looking at the prediction markets recently, I can’t help but remind myself of an Arnold Rothstein quote from Boardwalk Empire:
Some days I make twenty bets, some days I make none. There are weeks, sometimes months in fact when I don’t make a bet at all, because there simply is no play. So I wait, plan, marshal my resources. And when I finally see an opportunity, and there is a bet to make. I bet it all.
He may have even said it in real life. He was a known gambler, mostly for fixing the 1919 World Series and leading the Jewish Mafia in the New York City. Some balls he had.
While I don’t go all in in principle (he could, considering he was fixing matches), lately the markets are surprisingly uninteresting. Despite the world seemingly boiling, the only new political markets are on either Ukraine which from my portfolio perspective is saturated and Trump wild ideas, from tariffs to gold cards, that seem more like a shot in the dark than good +EV betting.
Seems only fitting that I dedicate this week’s deep dive to the concept of edge. The elusive alpha that differentiates good bettors from gamblers. While Ivan Cryptoslav had a good article a while ago on different types of edge you can have, I want to focus today on my edge specifically - where I have it in my opinion, how I track it and why I think it will be sustainable in the long-term. Subscribe below and enjoy.
The Post-Truth World
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