🔮 He Predicted the Next Shutdown 3 Weeks Early

How “Semi” saw the ICE powder keg before it went off

@semi (aka @slight-) is a Polymarket whale who ran a $286 deposit up to over $1 million in Polymarket profits.

When we last spoke, he explained his maxim of “reversing stupidity,” fading stale conventional wisdom and overhyped headlines.

Earlier this month I noticed his wallet was a top holder of “Yes” for Government shutdown by Jan 31, which at the time was trading around 22%.

When I asked, his thesis was simple:

At the time very few prominent Dems were calling for a shutdown, but with thousands of aggressive ICE agents fanning out across the country, Semi thought the chance for some kind of catalyst was well above 22%.

Three weeks later, ICE agents killed a second protester in Minneapolis, sending odds of a shutdown to 80% within hours.

The Oracle caught up with Semi on Monday to discuss how he thinks the coming shutdown will play out, why he thinks Democrats are underpriced to win the Senate, and California’s “insane” billionaire tax.

This interview has been edited for length. All answers are his own.

You were heavy on “shutdown” before the second ICE killing, of Alex Pretti, happened. Walk me through your thinking.

When you first reached out to me, I thought this is basically a one or two sentence thesis. ICE is so controversial among Dems, and they’re going to have to vote to specifically authorize it. Trump is being so aggressive in so many different areas right now. There are so many ways that Dems could just explode and not want to fund ICE.

It almost seemed like a 50/50 shot that everything would go swimmingly up until the last day where they have to authorize this appropriation. When you have thousands of police officers who are just hired, who aren’t amazingly well trained, and there’s mass protests against them, this type of thing is just sort of what happens at some point.

I was still accumulating when ”shutdown” was at 8 or 9%. I wasn’t sure it would be Minnesota. Trump had floated sending a bunch of ICE agents to Maine. Maybe something would happen there. But the fact that ICE is so controversial among Dems, and they’re policing so many different places at once, means the odds of something really weird happening are pretty high.

Polymarket has shutdown odds at about 80%. Do you think there’s any offramp at this point?

I’d say 90% is fair value today. The only way I could realistically see DHS funding getting passed is a huge Trump back down on immigration. Even then, you have to bring the House back. They’re not in town and there’s a huge snowstorm.

The Democrats’ concrete demands are: ICE needs to stop wearing face masks, a full independent investigation, civil liberties protections, never detain US citizens. This is a multi-week negotiation. It just doesn’t seem like something that happens in one week.

You lost money on the last shutdown betting it would be shorter. What happened?

Once we got into it, I realized both sides are actually completely fine with the shutdown. It’s not affecting them negatively. The Dems’ base wants to oppose Trump as hard as possible, and this is the one time their base is aligned with their strategic vision. It’s the only time they’ll have leverage until September.

Eventually Dems will start thinking about the coming midterms and cave, like last time. But it will take multiple weeks.

Let’s talk about the midterms. Polymarket has Democrats around 75-80% to win the House, about 33% for the Senate. How do you see it?

The House is probably over 90% for Dems. The Senate is probably a true toss up.

There’s a lot of races where Dems have strong candidates. Alaska, for example, the markets have as a toss up. But Mary Peltola is probably the strongest candidate Dems have anywhere. She very nearly won Alaska. There was polling today from Morning Consult that had Dan Sullivan as one of the least popular senators in the country, at minus nine. That actually surprised me.

Ohio seems quite underpriced for Dems. It’s at 63% Republican when it should be a toss up. Sherrod Brown lost by 3.5 points in 2024 in a year Trump won the popular vote. If you assume a blue wave environment, Democrat plus seven or eight, and take some points off because John Husted is stronger than Bernie Moreno, you should still think this race is a toss up.

Do Democrats think they can win the Senate at this point?

I think most Dems think they’re underdogs, but this will probably shift. Trump is losing his edge on his main issue. In the Siena poll, he no longer has an advantage on immigration. That’s very bad for Republicans. If they can’t run on immigration and they can’t run on the economy and they can’t run on health care, and there’s a huge voter turnout differential where Dems are incensed by Trump, this is quite good for their Senate chances.

What about the Maine Senate primary? Does that tell us anything about where the Democrats are headed?

I have money on Janet Mills. Mamdani won, which is obviously very impressive. But he was magnetic in a way that very few candidates are. It’s less a sign that the Dem Tea Party is going to win every race and more that Mamdani is a really amazing politician.

Graham Plattner has Nazi tattoos. He’s opposed by very big money on the Dem side. And Janet Mills is the incumbent governor who’s won the state multiple times. I don’t understand why Plattner would be the favorite.

I also have a thesis that if you’re a very old candidate, it hurts you in some ways, but old people tend to be more sympathetic to you. Maine is actually one of the oldest states in the country. I think this hurts Mills a lot less than it would almost any other state.

I see you’re looking at the California billionaire tax. What’s your thesis there?

I have no idea why this is at 50%. This is insane. I bet it down to around 40%.

First, it’s not even obvious this will be on the ballot. It has several hurdles. For it to even get on the ballot is maybe 50 to 60%. And I strongly believe that once it gets on the ballot, the voters will defeat it.

A lot of people think California equals Dem, and Dems hate rich people, so they’re going to vote for it. If you look at how ballot props historically go, this is just not true. There was a ballot prop in Massachusetts in 2022 raising taxes on millionaires by 4%. It won by only 2% in Massachusetts, dramatically underperforming any Dem at any level.

This wealth tax is much more radical. Income taxes everyone understands. Wealth taxes are a very new thing that’s never been done, and voters have a huge status quo bias. On ballot props, there’s a systematic polling error where the Yes option is usually overestimated by double digits. We have one poll showing Yes up 10 points. If I were running this prop, I would want to see Yes up by 20 before the giant money comes in against it.

You’re expecting massive spending against it by the tech companies?

Spending is more important on ballot props than most elections. Most people don’t have preconceived notions about a ballot prop when they walk into the ballot box. When you can spend $100 million to educate people, you can pretty easily defeat a prop in most cases.

Any other markets you’re watching?

I’m not fading a US intervention in Iran. It seems very plausible. But what I am fading is all of the regime change markets. If Trump strikes Iran, that doesn’t make me think regime change.

We already have an example of Israel having a shot at killing the Supreme Leader last year, and Trump vetoed it. And is there anyone who thinks Trump has the patience for a seven-month campaign like Libya? He was arguably elected for opposing a war in a Middle East country that started with the letters I-R-A.

Follow @semi on X.

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