Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Predictable Predictable Predictions Predict Predictable Predictions Predictable.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: Predicted Predictable Predictable.
[00:00:08] Speaker A: Predictive programming episode 10 and we've got a guest today. Our first virtual guest.
[00:00:13] Speaker C: He better be good.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: He. He's gonna be good. That's why we bent the rules for him. It's Foster.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Hey, what's going on, guys? No promises on being good, but I'll try.
[00:00:22] Speaker C: We're happy to have you. So for those who don't know you. Cause a lot of people I think come from sports that are watching this and you're obviously not into sports. Can you give a little background on who you are?
[00:00:33] Speaker B: Sure. I. I've so full background. I've been into like gambling adjacent fields. You know, prediction markets aren't gambling, but I've been into gambling adjacent fields for a long time. I worked in a casino from like 2017 onward. I was in the gaming department. I was a blackjack dealer, pit boss, bunch of stuff hopped all around.
Then like last year on the election, I found out about prediction markets, fell in love with them. I found PMT's prediction market traders videos on YouTube, learned how to trade from him.
Then we became buddies and started trading together. So as of January, like first I quit my job and went all in on prediction markets. So I'm a full time prediction market.
[00:01:15] Speaker C: You were still, you were still blackjack dealer?
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I was a blackjack dealer at that time.
[00:01:19] Speaker C: Wow. Okay.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: And you said you quit around January, so almost.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Quit or fired, you know, it's all the same.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Is your, is your P and L public?
[00:01:28] Speaker B: Yeah, it is.
Yep, I am. I think I just broke 400,000 combined.
[00:01:35] Speaker C: So probably a little bit better than a blackjack dealer salary.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. And when I was blackjack dealing, I was just doing part time on the weekends only because I wanted a lot of free time and I liked gaming. I still like gaming, so spend a lot of time on my computer.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: So I will say my intro to Foster was. I think we had a clip from the show or something like that and you commented something helpful about RFQs and how they worked and what was on a websocket.
And I just called you up on the spot and started peppering you with questions and you were just answering stuff, which was great.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean at that time I still, I even remember I was looking back and I'm like, I think I gave them some wrong info because they ended up changing like some stuff around the multivariates from what it looked like. But hopefully you guys got it figured out. Hopefully.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: Are you quoting multivariates Right now on.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Any platforms, I'm quoting only Kalshi. They just added multivariates for mention markets on Sunday or Thursday. Yeah, and I quoted them. I was like one of like three makers probably. That was really fun.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: Okay. You do any volume on it, like.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: A few hundred dollars. It's really niche.
[00:02:46] Speaker C: Wait, your few hundred dollars risk or their few hundred dollars risk?
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Their few hundred dollar risk to my, like maybe $1,000 risk.
[00:02:56] Speaker C: That's, that's actually a little bigger than I would have thought.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Yeah. And, and you, and you're quoting multiple mention markets within the same speech or program or something. So there's some correlation factor.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: So there's only at the moment for mentions. There's only essentially same, you know, we're not, whatever it's, it's only for the same event. So it's typically the NFL announcer markets. So yeah, there is some correlation.
And then I quote NFL a good bit every Sunday. I just quote like starting from Saturday afternoon to Sunday and fill what I can on there.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Okay. Are you, are you doing anything particularly proprietary or are you just pulling kind of market average numbers?
[00:03:38] Speaker B: I'm really just doing so. It's so crude. Like, like just getting kind of like what a fair value is. And at that point I'm really relying on the market to be accurate. You know, I'm not going to start quoting on Tuesday and then have lines move and get slammed by some. Somebody who's sharp. I'm only quoting on like Saturday or Sunday and then just multiplying all the probabilities. And then I started experimenting with some like correlation engines and APIs and like testing them and thinking of it myself. And I was like, you know what, I don't have the time for it. I got too many mentions to do. It's crazy.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Correlated mentions is very cool.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: Can you, can you do mentions with actual sports props? Like, could you do inches with the spread? Because like that be sick a dog. Plus the points plus inches. Right. You'd start thinking about like, oh well, you, you only care about these goal line stands if there's anything to play for. Right. Like there might be a little bit of something going on.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: I think, you know, they might get there eventually as long as, like there's people quoting it. And that's the main reason I quoted it is I wanted it to be successful because I wanted it to continue and I didn't want them to say, oh, this flopped.
So I hope so, because I do. I think of a bunch of different situations. Like, you know, things like the over and wild hit being said probably might correlate with each other since there'd be more scores. You know, there's so many cool directions that that could go, but I have no idea. Hold on.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: You're, you're a software developer, right? Like you're writing code to do a.
[00:05:14] Speaker C: Lot of this stuff?
[00:05:15] Speaker B: Yeah. So like when I was a blackjack dealer, I was online a ton and I just self taught myself programming for, I don't know, web development for game servers, anything like that.
And then I started using that to make alerts and like all sorts of tooling for trading dimension markets. And in last fall at the same time I found prediction markets. I also started going to college for software engineering to get a degree.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: And then was this your, was this your first time through college or did you go to college?
[00:05:48] Speaker B: Okay, it was my first, first time starting it and then I did, you know, that year and then in the summertime I talked to my wife and I was like, this is kind of taken off. I don't want to go all in on production markets. So I didn't do I continue for this fall.
[00:06:03] Speaker A: But okay, so when you graduated high school, you did not go to college and you worked in the gaming industry, including as a blackjack dealer?
[00:06:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: And then kind of in parallel we're exploring like were you vibe coding a lot of this stuff? Did you start doing the coding in the AI era? Was there anything?
[00:06:20] Speaker B: I started before that, before the I era, but that was just, I mean it was similar in my opinion. It was just searching online and finding stack exchange and seeing people post code examples and then just tweaking it. Like it was like the old school vibe coding, I guess. But AI definitely helped me a lot and I used it for a while.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: And then you did a year or two of undergrad and then realized I kind of know what I need to know to make money. I mean, to me that is like the real, the more complete story around all this stuff is some kind of intersection of the explosion of prediction markets and AI and a collapse of some of the traditional pathways. And it's a nebulous thing and it feels almost like I'm trying to be on all in or something. But it does seem to me like this recurring theme of these, of people seeing the big picture and being like, I'm going to do just enough college and just enough vibe coding and I'll build this and I'll call this guy up and we'll figure it out. And all of a sudden I'm climbing the leaderboards and that part is really exciting to me.
[00:07:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it was crazy. The leaderboards part is crazy. I used to look at like these big people on the leaderboards and be like, man, those guys are insane. I would never be like that. Now I'm on the all time leaderboard, Kalshi. And it's like just unreal.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: Yeah, it seems like a lot of money until it's your money and you're like, man, I need so much more money.
I love money so much.
[00:07:53] Speaker C: So can you talk about a little about your non rfq? Because he's going to get all nerdy.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: I know. Yeah, yeah.
[00:08:00] Speaker C: Your non RFQ mentions. Are you making both sides just only taking positions for mentions? What are you doing there?
[00:08:07] Speaker B: I am just.
I'm not taking both sides. Usually I'm not market making. I'm not. The only time I will take both sides is if I see like a piece of news. Like this meeting that's going on. A big topic is supposed to be Israel. I would enter an Israel position and then if it moves to where I think fair value is, then I would sell out. And then essentially I'm on both sides.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: Of at that point.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: But for the most part that's what go. Go ahead.
[00:08:34] Speaker C: That's. Yeah, that's what I want to try to ask about because I'm curious about these mentioned market things. With sports, it's pretty easy. You kind of have an idea what the fair value is. But like for a mentioned market, will like someone say Israel, I don't know what, when you enter a trade, do you think, I think this should be 80% and I'm buying 60 now or do you kind of just like, ah, this seems off and then as the price increases, increases, then you start thinking more and more about your fare. What's your process for kind of like that?
[00:09:04] Speaker B: I'd say it's more the second one. It's a lot of time it's like, this doesn't seem right.
And then I try to be like, okay, well why are people interpreting it the other way? Why is it underpriced right now? Because I've had a lot of times where I'd be like, this is wrong. I slam into it. And then five minutes later, after just a little bit of thinking and checking, I'm like, oh, this is why it was priced this way. Like I'm stupid.
But like, lately I've been trying to like derive my own fair value before I enter into a position. Because if you enter into a position at like 60 cents and then it climbs to 80. Like and you didn't already assign a fair value in your head you might be like oh this is great, I'm going to exit. And maybe the fair value would have assigned is like 90%. I don't if that makes sense. Like I feel like there's like some psychological aspect to it if you're not like putting it down. And I'm, I get really scared when I enter trades. Like I'm really risk averse. Like a lot of my styles are like really low risk in my opinion.
Just don't put too much down. I do a lot of like really safe plays or a lot of low risk plays. Like most of my wins are buying at 1% and then winning on mistakes or rules, arguments, stuff like that.
[00:10:17] Speaker C: It makes sense. So then going back to that example then with this you buy at 60 cents, it moves to 80 cents and you exit the position. But you would have assigned a fair value at 90. Are you then upset with yourself because you left 10 cents of value on the table by exiting or you happy because you now got 20 cents of value and you didn't have to write out the variance of being wrong? Because sometimes 10% of the time you.
[00:10:39] Speaker B: Will lose after the event. If it resolved. Yes. And it would have just paid out 100, I'll be upset. I'm like. Because I exit and I hedge out all the time when I'm trading sports, when I'm trading anything, I exit so quickly. I mean I did it just a second right before I got on the call. There was a mention market going on and I took some like crazy $0.01 shares and I sold them off at like $0.30. They resolved at a dollar a share. So I would have like 100x right there. I still made $2,000.
But like I'm like bummed.
Yeah. Because I always am like I should be thinking in terms of like the evil. I don't like let the any sort of win blind me to like what I could have made or what I should be making.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: One thing that happens though mentioned markets are they, they trade relatively tight and are zero fee is my understanding right now. Right.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: They have are zero maker fee, there is taker fees. So if you're doing somebody's ask you're going to pay like 1% probably or 1%.
[00:11:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I always, I always forget it. Yeah but it's, it's not as punitive as sports is like, like sports there's always historically been so much punishment for making a trade that it's like everybody raised on sports is completely allergic to closing a position. It's like you always ride out because it's so expensive to exit. That's been a tough thing for us. Even coaching people up on the idea of you actually can just get off all this stuff at post.
Because people are addicted to risk because they have to be. You can't win if you're not.
[00:12:15] Speaker C: It's funny because I remember Henry and I had a conversation like when Mamdani was in the primary versus Cuomo. I bought Cuomo at 43 cents the day before the election, and it, quote, unquote, closed at 57 cents. So I was like, all right, great trade. But I never. I thought the fare was around 55 ish. 53. But I was just. I didn't even think to sell.
Sell my position. And Henry. Henry was like, you should have sold. Like, but what about the. Oh, but there was no fees. Like, that was like a. You know, but like, as like in sports, you pay 5% whenever you want because you got to pay minus 110. So it's like very, very brutal.
So can you talk a little bit now, talking to sports? You said you were doing a little bit of sports. I want to hear about what you're doing in sports. Excites me.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: There was like a time when mentioned markets really slowed down. There wasn't much going on in, like, the Trump administration and politically, and there wasn't a lot of markets. So then at the same time, sports hit Kalshee, like, super hard. NFL came. I was like, you know what? I'm going to check this out.
I started, like, watching the games and, like, watching how the price would move. And it's cool because it updates way faster than a sports book. It's in, like, odds that I'm used to. I hate American odds. Even decimal. Like, I'm like, iffy on it.
I'm gonna piss off a lot of people. Whatever. They're just stupid to me. I love American odds. I love just seeing the win probability. 47%, 50%.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: By the way, I can deal with probability. Decimal is the worst because decimal, it is impossible to tell what the bid, ask, spread is. The numbers are incoherent. It'll be like 1.5 and whatever.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: Maybe that's just because I'm a blackjack dealer. I think of things in multiples of bets. So, like, you know, so if I'm paying something now, it just seemed like way nicer to me. But so I would watch the lines move and then I kept noticing, like, and I would Keep open like a book on the side or I would keep open polymarket. I was just monitoring like essentially like my own odd screen, but like just with a couple different platforms. And I would see like, okay, big play happens, Kalshi shoots to this price, then the book closes, the line adjusts. I don't know how it works on a book's end, but it will close the line, pause, adjust. The new line would come and then all the Couchie people would sl, like instantly just move to match the book because they're like, oh, we're wrong, the book's right. And I'm like, holy. That was like a, a 4 cent change. If I put down 10,000 shares, it's $400 if I can know when that's going to move.
And that's kind of just what I started doing. Like taking advantages of times where books, I'm assuming are closing the line near the ends of the games, you know, near like thresholds on like over unders or big plays or anything like that. And so I would just find when they seem mispriced and take the position on it. There's a lot of examples.
[00:15:12] Speaker A: So let's, let's, let's explain this a little more because you already leaked the edge. So let's completely explain what the edge leak looks like here. So that on polymarket is, does have a speed bump, right? Or no?
[00:15:24] Speaker B: Yes. Three seconds.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: Yeah, they have a three second speed bump. Speed bump is traditional in sports markets because of the fact that 60,000 people are in a stadium watching this thing. You're never gonna have a data feed that's faster than that. And a speed bump means in play trades hit a speed bump where they're held for a few seconds before a take can actually execute. Kalshi has zero speed bump, correct. And so what you see is when there is a, a 50 yard pass, everybody, everybody who's sophisticated tries to get a directionally correct order out as fast as possible, right? So that's that you were talking about that first wild swing from 50% to 70%. It'll just be like this rubber band. Like I know the probability went up. I'm just kind of sweeping the board with bids because I'm mostly trying to pick off stale makes as fast as possible. And I'm running a very unsophisticated model that is just parsing genius data, radar data as fast as I can to try and get to a number.
And then when sportsbooks, because sportsbooks actually go off the board until they can run a real model and come up with a number. They come up with a real number and there are varying opinions about who's good at this and who's bad at this. And then in the regimes you're talking about like end of game scenarios, these numbers are very hard to mitigate.
It can be tough to algorithmically know, is this team now going to kneel it out? You know, is this player going to actually run into the end zone or is he going to bend around, take a knee at the 1?
When they reopen, there often is another sweep on kalsheet to the number they're at. Because the assumption is that initial spike was very naive and just kind of a board clearing maneuver. And this is the resolution. And so you could even, you can monitor for that first spike and say, okay, I'm not going to quote a huge width where there's no chance I get really picked off myself, but that, you know, I can kind of be prepared for a rebound or something like that. So that's an interesting idea.
There's so much downstream of this, of these approaches. You were talking to us before the show about last night. The Raiders game was kind of a good example, right.
Monday Night Football, Cowboys, Raiders. What happened at the end of that game?
[00:17:47] Speaker B: I think Raiders turn it over on down to like the 20, their own 20 yard line. So Cowboys get the ball. So immediately people are like, oh, Cowboys are going to score.
You know, I don't know what happens on the books. I didn't watch it exactly. I became aware of it a little late. But all of a sudden, like, you know, the, the over moves, the spread moves, people are anticipating Cowboys to score again.
So you know, Las Vegas was down 17, so Vegas 17 +17 and a half, like shot way down, super cheap.
[00:18:19] Speaker A: And then can, can Dallas actually run it out, like run out the clock or is there okay, 2 minutes and 30 seconds? But they're up so much, it's like, well, maybe Las Vegas will call the timeouts. Like, who cares? The game is over. Right?
[00:18:32] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: Okay, so.
And then, you know, so they start kneeling it down instead of like attempting. They did a couple plays, it's like the five yard line or something really close. Then they start kneeling it, but they're not going to be able to run all the time. Maybe 40 seconds left, I can't remember exactly, but I was thinking, okay, well on fourth down, are they going to kick the field goal or not? And I talked to a buddy who's like way smarter than me in terms of football. They're like no, like it's gonna be smarter to just turn it over on the five yard line and you know, Vegas will just end the game, whatever. But you could take Vegas plus 17 and a half at like 55 cents. I think my first fill was.
And then, and then it moved to like 75, 80 and I filled a good bit at that and then the book caught up or something and it instantly moved to 90. And this was after they had kneel it twice.
Then the book moved to 90%. I exited. It was just like a really quick flip. But few hundred dollars. It's like low hanging fruit. It feels so stupid to explain it.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: No, but it's hard because like, so Sean McVay, for instance, head coach of the Rams, is always kicking the field goal there. Always. He's like the king of backdoor margin. And in spots where it's like he almost kind of plays for a cover rather than to win a game, like down nine, you know, with a minute, sort of drives into field goal range and kicks a field goal as time expires. He says it's because that point differential is like the fifth tiebreaker in playoff seating or something. Yeah, but I feel like it's just for the fellas to like get the COVID But anyway. But I always think of him as like the one polar example of like the points are coming, you know, I.
[00:20:17] Speaker C: Think is a better example. Not in the NFL. In hockey, whenever you have a team, a team down one or two goalie polls are. Every coach has a different goalie pull tendency. Some coaches down one will pull three minutes, some will pull it like a minute, some will pull it. And like if you pull three minutes, you covering the minus one and a half spread is now super likely because you have three minutes to get like a back door.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: If you're down 2, sorry.
[00:20:42] Speaker C: No, no. If you're down. Sorry. If you're down one, the team up by. Sorry. If the team up by 1 has like 3, 3 minutes to get the.
[00:20:48] Speaker A: Back throw, they're very likely to back through the game.
[00:20:49] Speaker C: But if they're up against a coach that's going to pull it like one.
[00:20:52] Speaker A: Minute, the totals go way up.
[00:20:55] Speaker C: And so you'll see a ton of disagreement. And if you actually, I don't know ball and hockey at all, but if you actually paid attention and you knew every coaching tendency, this is like a huge angle you could exploit.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: I was thinking about that just the other day about goalie polls and like how they affect it near the end of the game. I was thinking about now as NHL is picking up. I was like, man, I need to start trading that. Like that would be awesome. I mean there's so many crazy things. There was the Eagles game on like Sunday.
There was a, they gave it to like Saquon Barkley. He had like a 10 yard rush and he went down like legitimately like 2 inches from the goal line. And people were like trading the anytime touchdown market. Is it in, is it going to get reversed? Like people are live trading and you're seeing it jumping. I'm like, I'm like, this looks wrong. Well, I'm not going to trade if this is right or wrong. If the Eagles are at the one yard line, Hurts is going to push, push it in for a touchdown. I'm like, I'm just going to the hurts anytime touchdown market. It was still stale at like, you know, I don't know, 40 cents. Oh my God. I'm like, I'm going to take what's here a little bit. Like it's just, it's just weird, weird stuff like that.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: I want to jump back to mention markets a little bit. So. One thing people find in sports is that the end game of sports always involves market making to some degree. Like the, the biggest groups and, and it, it can manifest in, in different ways with different degrees of legality or whatever. But sooner or later, if you want to be turning over millions daily, putting numbers up becomes a requirement to some degree.
How like on your journey and mentions, as you're improving your numbers and improving your process, how much are you thinking about a possible end game where you're actually quoting these numbers and where you have to kind of be the mention end boss? Is that in your sights at all? And do you, a follow up question would be do you have any knowledge of who those players are currently?
Do you think they're truly winning making. Do you think they need rebates to win? Like what, what, what does the state of that ecosystem look like on the maker side?
[00:23:16] Speaker B: Okay, that's a really good question. I have started kind of branching into like deriving my own actual numbers and trying to make both sides when the time is right. Like, I don't do it currently because most of the time the numbers just are so far from like where my fair value is. It's like, it's like, okay, I'll put up a bid for no at like 28 cents. I think the fair value is at like 40. So then I'm going to make like.
I mean I put up a bid that low because I just don't want to slam all the orders I'm getting filled at 28, I'm just going to take it.
But I think eventually it'll get to that point because in the NFL announcer markets a lot of things are a lot like a lot more based on like probability, like the probability of a team going to an end inches situation or you know, some, a doink or a face mask occurring. Like all those things are like a lot more probabilistic, I feel like. So that's where I'm starting to get my own numbers. I built out a really big data set for that kind of stuff, so I'm moving towards that.
I think that the current makers for mentions, I have a lot of respect for them because I think they just get slammed a lot of the time. I mean obviously, you know, people doing it during an event like live sniping or bonding is like huge because the market's still open when a speech is going on.
But pregame I still think that they price stuff wrong a lot. I know that there's really only a couple groups doing it. Otherwise it's mostly just counterparties. It feels like I'll talk in the Kalshi discord.
It's you know, two different sharp people who are just disagreeing on a price and just matching against each other. So I don't know how big the market makers are for it. I've talked to Kelshi Trading, which is Kalshi's trading arm that's not directly affiliated but somewhat like wants to empower the Kelshi markets.
And I got a lot of respect for like they make a lot of the mention markets and if without them they would die.
I don't think they're winning in mentions like, but I think that they're surviving somewhat or they wouldn't quote it as heavily.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:28] Speaker C: I want to ask what percent of your volume is maker versus taker? If you have a rough guess or if you know the exact.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: Probably 60% taker, honestly.
[00:25:38] Speaker C: Okay, and then what percent of your profits are maker versus taker?
[00:25:43] Speaker B: 95% taker.
[00:25:46] Speaker C: I, I had a feeling because that.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: Was like, you know what I'm known for, I guess like is catching people's mistakes. Like there's been times Trump has said Indiana and someone interpreted as Canada or something in like a badly mic'd up room or event and they tried to live snipe. They bought Canada. Trump's gonna say Canada to 99. I'm like, wait, this is wrong. I took no at $0.01 for 25,000 shares and he didn't end up staying Canada the rest of the event. And you know, I went 250 to 25 grand so that's just like really biased. But I've done that four times now.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: But, but there's a degree to which like, like sitting there doing it is how you find that four times. But some, some groups even build the, the market making software because it's like, well, I need some fully automated system to be in place to even catch that every time, right. And then in the meantime I'm just kind of quoting everything around 0% ROI or even marginally negative ROI just so I'm the guy, right? Like I run all these markets, it's me. And so when the opportunity is there, my thing is out there killing it. And yeah, I know in sports like, like for us and for other groups, disproportionate ROI comes from aggressive trading, even if the majority of volume is passive trading. And so that's the, and I wonder because like you mentioned, Katie is the primary mention maker would be my guess and it sounds like your assumption. And so the more real sophisticated like trying to win third party makers come on and add liquidity, the more I presume they will back off and widen and be like, we don't have to do this anymore.
Our mandate to support the product is unwinding. And so it's like there's in crypto they'll talk about like a sell wall, like it'll be hard to get past this price where I feel like there's a similar kind of like sell wall in a lot of these markets where as liquidity on boards a lot of the existing liquidity is going to be so happy to get the fuck out of Dodge.
It's going to take longer than you think to get there. But, but I don't think it, it's like impossible because I mean you talked about some of these are very probabilistic and can be modeled in a repeatable way. And if you're like, oh I hold 1% all NFL season, all NBA season, kind of like posting the same numbers day after day, that is worth doing for a bunch of reasons.
[00:28:15] Speaker C: If you don't, if you don't mind me asking, what is your roi? If you, if you know, if you don't want to say, you don't.
[00:28:19] Speaker B: I don't even know how I would calculate that. I guess it's hard for to say because I'm in and out a lot of trades like all of the time. I could just give you stats and Maybe you could derive them.
Derive it yourself if that makes sense. Let me see.
[00:28:33] Speaker C: I guess what's your vault? What's your volume on Cal sheet? So you 400k profit.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: What's your volume? Oh, that's a good point. 7.6 million Vol in volume since this year.
It's kind of a tough.
[00:28:46] Speaker C: So about five and a half.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, but that's, that's like shares average average entry price is 50%. So that's like 10% ROI on the handle and half of it is exiting positions. That's actually smashing.
Those are insane. You got to take more risks. Foster that margin down.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: I 100% know somebody else brought that up like a big trader. Domer brought that up in a podcast. He's like I realized like yeah, I'm like only going up. I just need to take more risk. I'm leaving money on the table.
[00:29:17] Speaker A: Like if you had Chris executing your exact same plays, you would no cat be up like maybe 600, 700. I have people say, no, I'm not being serious. Like when you just like I'm totally ballparking it just based on like what those numbers actually mean.
If you had, if. If you were at a like a probably a lower sharp because of higher risk profile.
So you never eating fees or eating a lot less fees and whatever. Like it adds up. I mean just even on our side as makers, like knowing users who use us as hedges like whenever. Cause we lay arbs to softbooks all the time and they're like you're my hedge. And they're, you know, the number still goes down and when you see it at the end of the day it's like how valuable is hedging really? Like was I actually facing risk of ruin? I'm not telling you what to do.
[00:30:09] Speaker C: But it, the reason I would just ask is like you know, look, even if, even if like you were fully like taking risks, never closing up positions and you got your IRI really low, it was like it sounds like it'd still be like 5 to 7% which is phenomenal in market maker land. I'm dreaming. If I get 2 1/2% like or 2 2% ROI, which just shows like the, you know the difference between like obviously though the volume of a maker is like multiple higher.
I do want to ask about the Brian Armstrong situation.
[00:30:43] Speaker B: Oh you guys.
[00:30:44] Speaker C: What are your general thoughts?
[00:30:45] Speaker B: You guys missed it literally 30 minutes ago. Probably something five times.
I won't say worse. Five times crazier happened.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: But what happened?
[00:30:56] Speaker C: What happened?
[00:30:57] Speaker B: Okay, so during Bill Ackman, who was doing some sort of announcement on a company he's a part of. I genuinely have no clue. But there's a market. What is he going to say during this Twitter space? Twitter spaces is like a group chat. Anybody can join the call in. Anybody can request to be a speaker. And he's taking speakers up from the audience.
And I join in there and I see polymarket badge, Polymarket badge, Kalshi badge. Kalshi badge. Just tons of things.
[00:31:29] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[00:31:30] Speaker B: And then he says, all right, I'm going to take up Easy Eats.
And he's, I know who this is. He streams himself trading mention markets on polymarket. I'm like, oh, my God. He comes up. He's like, you know, I love the company. I love what you're doing, but what do you think about your recent blowing up regarding your dating advice? I don't know if you guys have seen it. There's a big meme where he said to say, may, Can I meet you? May I meet you? Or whatever. He's like, how do you think it would work if you said, can I meet you? Instead of may I meet you? Would that have better luck? What do you think? Totally trying to get him to say it. And one of the strikes is, may I meet you?
[00:32:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:06] Speaker A: And the trading, like 6%, right?
[00:32:08] Speaker B: It was trading like 30. It was trading actually pretty high. Higher than I thought. I don't know.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: They're pricing in the guy joining.
[00:32:16] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
You had to. And then I'm like, what the hell? I go click on the market on polymarket top holders, number four, Easy Eats, same profile picture.
[00:32:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:26] Speaker B: What the fuck? The lack of response says, can I meet you? And he says, the other one, you know, I think the other one's better. Doesn't repeat may I meet you? Then Easy doubles down and it's like, well, when's the last time you said may I meet you? Or something like that? He's like, can you. Can you let me know, like, what it takes when you say it? He just totally didn't do it. But he doubled down trying to get it to happen. It was unbelievable. And it shot to 99% because people anticipated 100% is going to say it.
[00:32:55] Speaker A: That's.
That's so funny because Bill Ackman also wrote a check to get himself into an ATP Challenger tennis event earlier this year that similarly was like, how do you make odds on this when this guy's 58 or something? Like, they shouldn't win a single game except for his partner hitting a Bunch of aces. But on the other hand, everybody's gonna go easy on him.
It wasn't a rigged game, but it was like it didn't follow the regular rules.
Yeah, it was basically an exhibition match in the middle of a real.
[00:33:27] Speaker B: There's a lot of discussion about that for the battle of the sexes tennis match about to go on. People are on.
[00:33:32] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:33:33] Speaker B: But regarding the Brian Armstrong.
I didn't really like it that much at first. I thought it was hilarious. I was driving. First thing I did is call pmt. I'm like, you got like, you gotta look at this. Like, this is insane.
And then I realized, oh shit, we're screwed. Like, this is really bad for mentioned markets. And I think what happened today is if you were.
[00:33:56] Speaker A: Do you have any proposals to try and rectify stuff like that? Like, is there any rule change or directive that you think could reduce that friction of the party being aware of the market and actively saying or not saying something to influence the market?
[00:34:16] Speaker B: I think we just gotta focus on events that aren't going to be possibly influenced. Influenced by like outsiders who might have more to gain. Like you guys have spoke about it as far as like, you know, when you have like Joe Buck, like how much money is gonna have to be in a market for him to be influenced to. To say a certain thing. But you know, as you get lower and lower, like in an earnings call, maybe it's happened where an analyst has asked a question and nobody even realized that they were trying to do it. I feel like an analyst would require less money. And then you get to Twitter spaces. Somebody's on an anonymous Twitter account. Like, there's no.
They would do it for 50 bucks.
[00:34:55] Speaker A: So wait, wait.
[00:34:56] Speaker C: So I don't understand, like, why do you think this Bill Ackman thing is bad? I hear this. Maybe I haven't thought about it enough. This doesn't strike me as bad because Bill Ackman wasn't compromised. And you have to know that people can join during the spaces. I guess the market's got a price, price, price that in. If Bill Appen has said, oh, you're trying to get dimension market and then says it, that's awful. But what you described to me sounds actually pretty good. Like it's. It's like the people are battling and. And he even lost. So it's like seems like a win. Win all around.
[00:35:27] Speaker B: No, it is true because it shot to 99. He took no at 1 cent. Then he didn't end up saying that the rest of the time. Like it was an interesting dynamic. I think it was just really weird since he held a position and it was public on polymarket that he was holding the position.
And I think Bill Ackman was aware of it. He had Pauly Market come up as a co host during the event.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: Yeah, he knows what Poly Market is.
[00:35:51] Speaker B: Yeah, he's aware of that. I don't know if he knew there was a mention market going on. On it, on it.
But I don't know. Overall it just feels like less.
I don't know, it's less what I like to do. I like to like think about what's going to go on during an event. Not have to, not have to price in the odds of somebody actually being able to influence it. So like my solution would just be like let's just keep markets that have less possible influence from outsiders. Like NFL announcer markets, Trump speeches. Like stuff like that. Seems better to me.
[00:36:22] Speaker C: Oh yeah. I mean, good thing Trump has no influence on any outsider. Anything like that.
[00:36:28] Speaker A: All right, we gotta wrap it up.
[00:36:30] Speaker C: We'll do.
[00:36:31] Speaker A: I got a last question.
[00:36:32] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:36:33] Speaker A: My last question is just next six months, what are you working on? What's like the next horizon for you?
[00:36:37] Speaker B: So I really have no idea because I don't know where this space is going to be. I constantly think my edges drying up. Like I feel like I'm grabbing like not low hanging fruits, just picking it up off the ground. Like this is like really stupid stuff and a lot of it I'm not going to like talk about because I know if there was one other person that I would lose that edge immediately.
So I don't talk about a lot of it or even post it.
But I think prediction markets are going to blow up. Like prize picks just added Kalshi integration mention. Markets are tradable on prize picks and like so now I'm really just trying to size up, take a lot more risks.
I really want to break 500k before the end of the year. Like that would be insane.
And then, you know, going into next year I really just want to ramp it up because in three and a half years you're three. You know, when the next administration's in, who knows where prediction markets are going to go. Kalsi loses a court case and loses sports or you know, starts getting banned in states. Like that's like my worst nightmare. The reason I'm so risk averse is I went all in on this. Like I got nothing else at the moment.
[00:37:40] Speaker C: Well, would that not make you want to maximize your earn now?
[00:37:45] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:37:45] Speaker C: Like super aggressive now. Like, yeah, go all in now.
[00:37:49] Speaker B: That's why. That's what I'm transitioning to. Like, if you could see my chart, it was like this, and then I realized that, and now it's, like, picking up the pace.
[00:37:57] Speaker A: That's good.
[00:37:57] Speaker B: I've had $200,000 months of life, last two months, because I was like, I need to step it up, because I don't know how long it's gonna last. Before I had my entire net worth, my Kelshi portfolio, Like, every dollar in my name is in there, and I'm like, when all of a sudden I see my available cash is, like, five grand and all of my stuff is in positions, I'm like, holy. Like, this is terrifying.
