I became my own blind trust. By definition this is impossible. But, I did it!
A blind trust is when someone manages your assets such that you aren’t involved in market decisions. Blind trusts are a legal device intended to shelter one from their own market bending political power or insider knowledge. The trust eliminates the moral hazard that… Ha ha ha ha…. like anyone in such a position is worried about morals. I had ya’ going didn’t I?
OK, the real reasons are related to legal entanglements. Blind trusts are meant to avoid prosecution for “insider trading” (i.e. Martha Stewart) or political shenanigans (a.k.a. “Clintionesque activities”).
I don’t need a blind trust. I’m totally bereft of political power. I’m not even sure my vote is counted anymore (are you?). I’ve no special knowledge of any financial entity. I think of “assets” as things like “fresh tires on the truck” and “a full freezer”. A Rockefeller I am not. Good news! Every dollar I have is my own to misuse at will.
There’s another reason for blind trusts. That is if you’re a rich unworthy inheritor and therefore so fuckin’ irresponsible you’d burn Daddy Warbuck’s fortune on hookers and blow six months after you got your hands on it. (Ask yourself why “trust funder” is not a compliment.) Or, you may need to be shielded from your stupidity. Perhaps, you’ve been so totally indoctrinated you actually believe the shit your college professors said?
That indoctrinated group is where PredictIt comes into play. I figure the game is to find places where people en masse are making bad valuations. As soon as you find that spot, you do the opposite. The efficient markets theory suggests the masses are right more often than not. Based on rational investors you’ll usually lose.
Seen much rationality lately?
In practice, the masses now include people who’ve been indoctrinated since they were getting triggered by Spongebob Squarepants. They’re the target. Find something they believe in deeply. That’s where you’ll sniff out the goldmine of derp.
This is harder than it sounds. People sound like dipshits. It almost appears the natural state of mankind… or at least the college educated (indoctrinatus dipshiitius). But do they act on their dipshit assertions with their own money? Ah ha! Not so much. Watch a hippy sometime. They’ll lecture you about diversity all day long. But after work they’ll hypermile their Prius past fifty blocks of vibrancy to a McMansion which is nestled in a lily white gated community as uniformly manicured as the Queen’s garden. Hippies don’t go large on their beliefs, because they don’t actually believe them. They’ll signal their superiority on Facebook but do you they line up to finance California’s bullet trains and Solindra’s solar plants? Of course not! Hippies know their ideas are shit, that’s why they use taxes to implement them.
(As an aside, the reason young people accumulate mountains of debt for college is they incurred it before they realized deep in their soul that the debt was theirs and not society’s. Their short lifetime of free rides didn’t prepare them for the enormity of a $100K sociology degree. That’s why nobody begins a sociology degree in their 40s. By that age you’ve learned the difference between your money and “everyone’s money”.)
Pondering beliefs, actions, and the distance between the two brings me to Global Warming. (Another aside: I refuse to call it Climate Change. I’ve lived through the “Oncoming Ice Age of Doom” in the 1970’s. I’ve lived through Al Gore’s “Global Warming” that was absolutely going to make an ice free north pole (littered with polar bear skeletons) 5 years ago. I’ll be damned if I’ll let them use the word “change” and claim both options. Call it cold or call it hot but quit bitching’ at me about both.)
Anyway, Global Warming is a good spot to sniff about. It’s a likely intersection of beliefs people claim en masse but which don’t match the measurements (the derp faction) and a place people will spend a ten spot to signal their superiority:
“Will NASA find 2019’s global average temperature highest on record?”
Talk about a sweet market! It should be a shoe it! Buy NO and laugh all the way to the bank. In general, betting against anything being the highest on record is pretty safe. By definition, most of the shit that happens in any given year is well within the range of shit that’s happened in recorded history. That’s why records are… um… recorded.
I’d happily bet against almost anything setting any record in any year. Will the number of excellent blowjobs in San Jose be the most in human history in 2019? No! Will German speaking fruit bats die more in 2019 than any other year in history? No! Will the number of re-animated corpses that play kazoos be more in 2019 than any other time in recorded history? No!Will the number of Fiats attacked by weasels in Guam be the most ever? No! Will the number of times Paul Krugman is wrong exceed humanly understood number theory in 2019? OK… Krugman is an exception. He’ll be more wrong every year until someone takes him behind a barn and Old Yeller’s his ass. So there you have it, averaged over several markets, bidding NO against highest records is a no brainer.
But that’s thinking like a Curmudgeon who lives on earth where the sky is blue and 2+2=4. This is an era when reality is pushed in the corner and getting dogpiled by lemmings. Read the fine print. This isn’t a market about actual thermometers recording actual temperatures… it’s a market about what NASA will say about global modeled aggregates. Is NASA going to tell the truth? “We measured temperatures and found absolutely nothing interesting, please fund us more.” Riiiiiight.
It’s not a verifiable single number: “will Boston Airport weather station record >X degrees”, “will 2019 max out this thermometer in Rome that’s been around 400 years”, or even “the high number will be on the raw Landsat datastream that’s been incoming since 1972”. That’s the catch. NASA can announce any damn thing they want.
Betting against a historic never before seen recorded maximum is easy. Betting against NASA flinging shit is hard.
The game is afoot!
I decided the best way to play it was assume chimps were in the market. (It’s a global warming market after all.) I conjectured they’d collectively bid according to their teeny tiny world view. They’d say “NO WAY” to “global warming” when the Northern Hemisphere is in winter and the press is baying that Manhattan got 3″ of snow. “This just in, Manhattan is reeling from ankle deep snow! Stockbrokers are resorting to cannibalism because the Kobe Beef supply ran short. This is Trump’s fault.”
I further hypothesize they’d say “IT’S A RECORD WARMING YEAR” when it’s August and their nutsacks are sweaty. “This just in; everyone in Phoenix will die if the air conditioners fail for more than seven minutes. This is Trumps fault. Stay tuned for Bill Nye explaining how it’ll totally improve power grid reliability to switch to windmills.”
Two predictable motions; one down, one up. Then, the hard part. I’ll have to get the hell out before the end. I can’t just buy and ride it to the end of 2019. We all know the purpose of NASA is not science but to “engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering“. When NASA replaced the guys with slide rules and started taking orders about “feeling good”; it was all over. By now, there could be penguins in Maui and they’d say this proves global warming has been caused by middle class Americans who own SUVs.
So the safe buy in was “NO” during winter in Northern hemisphere. But it was priced too high. NO was somewhere near $.60. I decided to wait.
I tuned in after a tree day absence. YES had plunged 28%! (Meaning NO had soared.) I’d missed it. Damn.
But what’s this? I’d logged in a “BUY NO” order at $0.52. I don’t remember doing that.
Yes had made a minor run. NO clicked down just enough to trigger my buy. Then YES fell off the cliff and my pittance of NO shares gained 30%. Sweet!
Before anyone thinks I’m suddenly rich I’ll restate that this is a micro pittance we’re talking about. Not even enough to buy a six pack of beer. Alas, I’m simply not constitutionally built to risk money in serious amounts. I’ll take risks with chainsaws and motorcycles but I’ve had a fiscally lean times and they change you. Using money that would hurt if I lost it is not my way. Even so, I’m delighted. I do put real money up at real decision points and really report when I suck and when I rule. I figure it’s the same market calls to make 30% return on five bucks as it is a thousand.
Also, it’s all for fun. Did I fret about this over the weekend? Nope. I’d forgotten about my BUY order. I was my own blind trust. How cool is that?
Martha Stewart went to jail for not telling the FBI the truth not for insider trading….
Yes, it was not actual insider trading but not telling the FBI the truth about what might have been insider trading but was not pursued as such. I think Stewart wasn’t even under oath when she trapped herself. I always thought getting busted for lying about something that was not prosecuted (i.e. technically not a crime) was a shitty prosecutorial method. Even if it worked, it was dirty.
Martha Stewart is the poster child of don’t talk to the police. If she’d clammed up all would’ve been well for her. Thinking of perjury traps and Martha Stewart I’m not sure I’d even reply to a cop who asks if the sky is blue. “Look here Curmudgeon, we’re looking for the Shropshire Slasher. Beastly weather we’re having is it not?” “I have no opinion on the weather! Am I free to go?” Incidentally don’t talk to the police is a great video and everyone should watch it (and rewatch it like once every few years).
I felt the same about Bill Clinton who was “impeached” by the House but not the Senate. (Is it really “impeached” if the Senate acquits?) Just as with Stewart, Clinton was not “impeached” for boinking his employees at his place of work but for lying when he said he was not boinking his employees at his place of work. Though in Clinton’s case he lied under oath… perjury is pretty clear.
I think a blind trust would’ve protected Martha Stewart very well. If she didn’t know where her money was invested she couldn’t lie to the FBI about legally manipulating investments. As for Clinton, a blind trust wouldn’t have helped. Perhaps flying air force one to a legal brothel would’ve been wiser? Then again the whole thing started with Hillary Clinton’s investments. A single real estate deal went all the way to a blue dress. (A good reason to fear special prosecutors.) Maybe keeping her mitts away from money would’ve done wonders for the both of them? I’ve often thought of the Clintons as tragic (in the context of Greek Tragedy). Both went to great heights and then experienced a downfall from inner flaws. He lost a great deal of reputation due to being a horndog. She is just about the greediest human being on earth and totally willing to bend (break!) any legal constraint in the acquisition of first wealth and then power. She rode that train all the way to the Secretary of State and a pile of money… but she doesn’t seem happy. You cannot feel fulfilled when you are insatiable. I’m glad America’s Lady Macbeth was taken out at the knees by an Orange “hooligan”. Note that the hooligan in question doesn’t drink or smoke and rarely swears, and has been in the press’ spotlight for decades. If the press watched Hillary like they’ve watched Donald she’d be in San Quentin by now. So the hooligan, obnoxious and orange as he is, doesn’t have the Greek tragic flaw waiting to hammer him into the ground.
Please do note that Barry Sotero is no longer pResident, and as a result NASA no longer gives a flying fuck about Muslims. Goddard Space Flight Center is still, however, in charge of NASA climate “research”, and thus one should expect shitheadity to continue for a while.