November 5, 2024: A Primer

One French trader made $78.7 million on the 2024 election. You weren't in the market.

The Setup

October 15, 2024. A trader operating under the pseudonym "Théo" contacts YouGov. He's seen academic research on "social circle polling" — asking voters who their neighbors are voting for, not who they're voting for. The theory: in elections with social stigma, people lie about themselves but tell the truth about others.

He commissions polls in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The results show Trump significantly outperforming traditional polls. Théo raises his position to $80 million across 11 accounts on Polymarket.

Meanwhile, institutional polls show a toss-up. The VIX sits at 23.42. SPY options are pricing in uncertainty, but not direction.

The Divergence

October 7: Kalshi shows Harris at 51%. Polymarket shows Trump at 54%. Same election. Six-point gap. Free money for anyone watching both venues.

October 30: Polymarket has Trump at 67%. Traditional polls still show a coin flip. Someone knows something — or thinks they do.

October 31: A speaker at Trump's rally calls Puerto Rico "a floating island of garbage." Trump's odds drop 6 points overnight to 61%. Volatility in a market most institutions can't access.

Election Night

November 5, 8:00 PM ET: Polymarket shows Trump at 60%. Polls close. Results start coming in.

November 6, 2:00 AM ET: Polymarket shows Trump at 98.8%. The market called it hours before the networks.

By market open: SPY gaps up 2.53% — the strongest election-day response in over a century. The Dow jumps 1,503 points. Tesla surges 14.9%. Bitcoin hits a record $75,345. The VIX collapses from 23.42 to 15.9.

Théo's 11 accounts show $78.7 million in profit. He bought Trump at 40¢. It settled at $1.

What Institutions Missed

The signal. Prediction markets had Trump at 60% when polls showed 50/50. That's not noise — that's alpha. Traders with better methodology were pricing in the shy voter effect that traditional polls missed.

The arb. A 6-point gap between Kalshi and Polymarket on the same binary event. In any other market, that's a guaranteed trade. In prediction markets, institutions couldn't execute it — no unified access, no cross-venue infrastructure.

The hedge. You could have bought "Trump wins" at 40¢ to hedge your short-volatility book. Instead, you owned VIX puts that got crushed and missed the directional move entirely.

The Problem

Polymarket is offshore and crypto-only. Kalshi has position limits and limited markets. There's no unified API. No compliance infrastructure. No way to deploy institutional capital without operational chaos.

A French retail trader with a YouGov subscription outperformed the entire institutional market because he had access and a thesis. You had neither.

The Next Event

Debt ceiling. Fed decisions. Regulatory rulings. Geopolitical events. The calendar is full of binary outcomes that move markets — and prediction markets will price them before traditional instruments.

The next November 5th is coming. You don't want to miss it.