🔮 Will He Get it?
Plus a brief history of Nobel Prize gambling
On October 10, at 11 AM Central European Time, we will learn the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
With 50 days left, Donald J. Trump is trading at 13% odds to become the fifth US president to win, the fourth while in office.
A winning bet on Trump would turn a $1,000 bet into over $7k. And a successful bet against him would be a 13.6% return in 50 days, a very respectable IRR of over 165%.
Does our boy have what it takes to bring home the gold in Oslo?
The Oracle investigates.
Inside the Process
The Peace Prize is selected by a five-member committee of Norwegian political personalities appointed by the country’s parliament to six-year terms.
Looking at the current members, you have a spectrum of the Scandinavian center-right to the Scandinavian center-left. The committee is stacked with Model UN types that, while they may be affiliated with one party or another, project a balanced, technocratic image.
This writer was unable to uncover any past pro-or anti-Trump statements by any member of the committee.
What makes handicapping the Nobel especially hard is that nominations are secret, there is no shortlist, and all deliberations are sealed for 50 years.
At least in the papal polymarkets, we had a universe of cardinals to pick from. Whereas literally any activist or politician off the street can take down the Nobel (typically, 200-300 formal applications are received each year).
Looking at the 2025 Peace Prize polymarket, you will note that the top candidates only add up to about 60% because of the high wildcard potential. In the Polymarket orderbook, the Nobel Prize is a “complete negative risk” market. This allows more candidates to be added to the market once it is live, but does not offer an easy way to bet on “none of the above” aside from shorting every option.
Expect the Unexpected
Most Nobel betting action has traditionally been in literature and peace, with the physics, medicine, and economics prizes neglected.
Because there's such a wide universe of candidates, the winner is very often a surprise. Over the past 14 years, top betting contenders (defined as in the top 2-3 betting picks) have correctly identified the Peace Prize winner only twice: Abiy Ahmed in 2019 and Malala Yousafzai in 2014, an 86% surprise rate.
Bettors seem to be biased towards high profile political figures at a time when the Nobel Committee is increasingly opting for groups or lesser-known activists. More confusingly, there is no guarantee that the winner will be a single person at all, as the committee awards around 20% of prizes to humanitarian organizations, or groups of individuals like the Japanese atomic bomb survivors that won in 2024.
Looking at the data between 1950 and 2024, the awardees break down as follows:
Individual: 35 awards (46.7%)
Combo/Shared: 20 awards (26.7%)
Organization: 15 awards (20.0%)
Not awarded: 5 years (6.7%)
Note, the full dataset for this article is below:
How Trump Could Win
It’s no secret that Trump covets the Nobel, and while the committee keeps the process under wraps, nothing stops nominees from campaigning for themselves, or nominators from revealing their nominations.
At least six public figures have publicly announced nominations of Trump, including Benjamin Netanyahu, Cambodian PM Hun Manet, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan plus three GOP House members. They cite Trump’s successful mediation of a Cambodia-Thailand ceasefire, his first term role in the Abraham Accords, and efforts to end the Ukraine war as reasons he deserves the prize.
And there is certainly precedent for sitting presidents to win: he'd be the fourth after Teddy Roosevelt (1906), Wilson (1919) and Obama (2009). The Obama win also offers a parallel in that his prize was, as committee members later put it, based on "aspirational hope" rather than concrete achievements.
And there are certainly breakthroughs that Trump aspires to, like an end to the Russo-Ukraine war and peace in the Middle East. The best case for Trump to win would be if the committee thinks they can nudge him towards intensifying peace efforts, or if there is an unexpected breakthrough in the Ukraine war.
In fact, the odds for a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire by October (🔮12%) almost exactly match Trump’s current odds of taking home the Nobel.
The Case Against Trump
The biggest case for betting against Trump, as discussed above, is the committee’s tendency for surprise picks. But there are also some Trump-specific issues:
Trump's poll numbers in Norway are abysmal. In a 2024 poll, just 4% of Norwegian women and 12% of men said they’d vote for Trump over Harris if they were eligible, which could put a damper on cocktail invites for committee members who hand the prize to Trump.
There is also the 2018 precedent: Trump was the betting favorite that year after his summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. But the committee passed him over for sexual violence activists instead. Significantly, two current Nobel Committee members, Asle Toje and Anne Enger, were also on that 2018 selection panel.
Watch for Leaks
Finally, it’s important to note that the Nobel Committee's secrecy isn't foolproof. There are several precedents for Nobel winners to leak early.
Norwegian broadcaster NRK leaked the 2013 Peace Prize winner over an hour early, correctly naming the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
And in 2023, Swedish broadcaster SVT received the official press release hours early due to an accidental email by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
This creates possible opportunities for fast-clickers to exploit, and odds could swing dramatically in the final hours if local media frontrun the announcement.
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.
Figures...now he is destroying the Nobel Prize. If he gets it he will insult the accomplishments of all the good works of previous recipients. This prize should NOT got to someone who is actively destroying a country while whining about world peace!!!