I don’t normally take InTrade very seriously, but as a former daytrader and not just as a longtime confirmed non-fan of the Mittster, I find this kind of price move in a contract something to behold.
Closing Prices chart as of High Noon PST – Mitt Romney to be elected President in 2012:
There’s usually a tradable bounce, sometimes a breathtaking recovery move, in a heavily traded stock undergoing this kind of collapse. That was one of the few trade set-ups, and one of the most exciting to act on, that I ever got any good at – but I’m not convinced at all that InTrade is the kind of market where that sort of thing is doable.
I don’t understand. what does the chart say that people are trying to trade Romney for?
A half-eaten bag of peanuts, of course.
is it the bag that’s half-eaten or is it a full bag of half-eaten peanuts?
expiring minds want to know
actually it’s a bag one-quarter full of extra-large peanuts, strangely enough. Comes out to about half. Plus a few styrofoam to fill it out some.
Contract still falling today, but not as steep as y-day, still way outside the 20-day standard deviation…
should value continue to fall, will bags of pre-eaten peanuts come into play?
yes, and then pre-eaten and pre-digested bag fragments, both paper and cellophane. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves yet.
I’m not, you’re traders arre. Romney as the Repub candidate has a floor that he’s close to and through which he is not going to fall unless conjoined with a dead boy or live Islamist girl.
true, but the Mitt contract pays 0 whether Mitt get 268 electoral votes or 0 electoral votes. Now, if I were a trader, and Intrade a sufficiently liquid market, I’d be a buyer on the first sign of a bounce in whatever relevant time frame precisely because sometime over the next few weeks he’ll probably get some kind of good news or an outlier poll or something. But it’s a binary decision in the end, and I’ve always thought he was going to lose, so, barring Obama w/dead boy etc., I’d unload the contract as soon as I’d made any profit on it at all.
For ref here’s today’s Obama chart: