🔮The Oracle: Convention Bounce for Harris?
PLUS: Telegram block incoming? • Israel strikes put Middle East war on hold? • Superbowl 2025 favorites
PLUS: Telegram block incoming? • Israel strikes put Middle East war on hold? • Superbowl 2025 favorites
What is The Oracle?
The Oracle is the first news product from Polymarket, the world’s largest prediction market. Our goal is to help you understand the world more clearly through the lens of prediction markets. The Oracle combs through the 1,000+ individual markets on Polymarket to find insights about the news you might have missed. It will look at how the political judgment of pundits and experts stacks up to the wisdom of traders from all around the world.
Convention Bounce for Harris?
One recurring debate on prediction markets is whether they anticipate the news, or react to polls and other public information.
One way to look at this is through the polling effect known as a “convention bounce,” which is marked by:
A six-point (on average) polling shift towards a party after its convention
Bounce peaks 6-7 days from the start of the convention
Dissipates over the next 3-4 weeks
Do we see a convention bounce in prediction markets? On one hand, you might expect markets to adjust upward in anticipation of a bounce in the polls. On the other hand, perhaps the markets ought to ignore the bounce since they tend to revert back to the status quo.
Did Trump get a convention bounce? Quite the opposite. The Republican convention coincided with the climax of the Biden dropout saga, which saw both Trump’s polling and his Polymarket odds decline.
What about Harris? By the definition above, it’s still too early to say, as we would expect the bounce to be fully priced in by Thursday of this week. But there is another confounding factor on the Democratic side: RFK Jr’s suspension of his campaign which coincided with the end of the DNC.
We will be covering the RFK factor in the Thursday edition of The Oracle, so make sure you’re on the list.
The Horse Race in Four Numbers: All Tied Up
General Election Odds: Harris 50% - Trump 50%
Pennsylvania: Harris 50% - Trump 50%
Odds Pennsylvania is Tipping Point: 36% (all time high)
Telegram in Jeopardy?
On Saturday, France arrested Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of Telegram, a messaging platform with nearly one billion active users around the world. Durov is facing charges that Telegram facilitated crimes including drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organized crime and the promotion of terrorism.
Why it Matters
Due to its light moderation, Telegram has become a major source of unfiltered geopolitical news, including reporting from Gaza and the front lines of Ukraine.
Although often described as encrypted, Telegram is not fully encrypted by default and has come under government pressure to provide user information.
In recent years, Telegram has become a platform for other chatbots and gaming apps to run on, making the potential fallout even wider.
France offers few of the legal protections that shield American tech companies from liability for user generated content.
What Markets Say
27% chance Durov is released in August
8% chance Telegram is banned by an EU country before October
Middle East War on Hold?
On Saturday, Israel struck Hezbollah rocket launch sites across southern Lebanon, in what it called a pre-emptive strike against an imminent attack. Hezbollah stated that the weekend marked the “first phase” of its response, hinting that more could be coming.
A CNN report framed the strikes as a successful case of preemption: “The cross-border fire on Sunday morning marked a significant escalation after 11 months of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel. But it appears to have dampened fears of a wider war, for now.”
What Markets Say
In the short run, the Israeli strikes on Hezbollah targets appear to have moderately increased the odds for escalation into a ground war in which Israeli troops enter Lebanon with the goal of controlling territory. The odds of this surged as high as 62% earlier in the summer.
There is a 40% chance of direct Iranian attack on Israel before October, down from a high of over 75% earlier this summer.
Odds for both Lebanese and Iranian escalation are trending downwards this morning following reports that Iran may have decided to further delay military action.
Superbowl 2025 Champs?
The 2024-5 NFL season kicks off on September 5, with defending champs Kansas City Chiefs hosting the Baltimore Ravens. The next day the Philadelphia Eagles will face the Green Bay Packers.
What Markets Say
The Kansas City Chiefs are 13.2% favorites to win the Super Bowl this season.
Polymarket’s Super Bowl odds closely match major sportsbook betting lines. However there are minor variations below the top slots.
Disclaimer
Nothing in The Oracle is financial, investment, legal or any other type of professional advice. Anything provided in any newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not meant to be an endorsement of any type of activity or any particular market or product. Terms of Service on polymarket.com prohibit US persons and persons from certain other jurisdictions from using Polymarket to trade, although data and information is viewable globally.
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