Thursday 26 August 2010

State of play in Australia

I don't follow the papers, I follow the markets. Mostly because I've been having a bit of fun arbitraging price differences across them - no chance of losses across outcomes, expected gain at current prices $250.

At BetFair, things have moved against the Liberals, with prices moving over the day from about a 58% probability to roughly 50/50. But there's substantial sell pressure in Labor's book, with $2706 sitting there ready to short Labor (buy Liberal) at prices from 51.8% to 58.3%. There's only $887 sitting there ready to buy Labor (short Liberal) at prices from 50% down to 39.8%. In both cases, I've combined the books assuming that it's either going to be Labor or Liberal so a short on the one is equivalent to going long on the other.

At iPredict, $106 backs Labor at prices from 38.5% to 50%; $123 sits ready to sell Labor at prices from 50% to 63% (I've pulled my orders in both for these purposes).

The "jaws" at Betfair look set to move downwards a bit for Labor and up for the Coalition. But it's neat how tight things remain, days after the election.

If only I knew how to write scripts to automate trading across platforms whenever prices differed. Of course, if it were easy, no such price differences would exist. Sigh.

No comments:

Post a Comment