2026-01-23

Papertrail

Prediction markets piece in NYTimes

https://archive.md/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/business/prediction-markets-polymarket-kalshi.html

Trading isn't great for you. Reminds of the piece about Peter Lynch who ran the famous Magellan fund in the 80s and finally getting to go on holiday an then '87 stock market crash happens (this is in his autobiography).

As the markets have gotten bigger, and competition sharper, trading has become more time consuming. Domer’s battle station has four monitors and a TV. He orders from Uber Eats a lot. During the Israeli election, his sleep schedule was based around Israel’s.

When Domer met the woman he’s now married to, in 2017, she couldn’t have known what she was signing on for. At the time, the main platforms were Betfair and PredictIt; there were fewer events to bet on, less competition, less money at stake, and Kalshi and Polymarket didn’t exist. “If you think about someone married to me,” Domer said, “there’s constantly stuff on my phone, stuff distracting me. We’re sitting down to dinner, I’m like, ‘I have to run upstairs, Eric Adams just tweeted,’” he added, referring to the former mayor of New York City.

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