My work today on
@Kalshi.
$3,973
Portfolio $2,235 ➡️ $6,208
Only played one market today. I have named it, "The Olympic Miracle." Full story below.
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After the Bernie Billionaire ruling on Friday I was feeling pretty down and out. I only lost $160, but it hit me hard for some reason, so I took 36 hours off.
Part of my down-mood was probably because that win would have put my port at $2,900. Instead it dropped me to $2,229. Why was that important?
On January 22nd I left my job to do this full time with a $500 portfolio, and I told myself I had to get to $3,000 by February 22nd to justify I keep doing this. With 1 day left, I knew I needed a miracle, and I posted as much.
When the Olympic Closing Ceremony event came up I prayed for something special and the universe answered. I caught one of the commentators saying "Amphitheater" in very beginning of the broadcast. No one bought it, and I didn't know if it would count either, so I waited.
For the next two hours I watched and listened as they called it the "Arena" from then on out. When the event ended the strike hadn't been said so I started scooping shares at 4c and 2c before broadcasting the find in the forums.
In retrospect I think I could have won $10,000 or more, but I feared another Kalshi rulecuck. The thing is, this broadcast was not set to begin until 2:30pm EST. It began at about 2:26pm and the commentator said the strike at about 2:28pm. Does that count? I don't know, I'd never seen this before.
The title of the broadcast matched, but the Kalshi market didn't say LIVE yet because the broadcast started early. I confirmed with some OG's that it should count, but who really knows. The Olympics have been a shifting sand of, in my opinion, inconsistent rule applications given unprecedented and strange broadcast issues.
To ameliorate this rulecuck risk, I decided to pretty quickly announce what I found. My plan was to sell into the hype to capture my gains. But I definitely rushed too much. I also feared they'd pause the market and then use the line to decide (which is a rumor going around). I had to get the news out and make sure the line went up.
As soon as I announced it, priced spiked to 98. I missed selling there but sold about 1,400 shares around 90 for $1,600 to secure my best win ever. I let the rest ride, and the price dropped back to 50 before sentiment was reached and a static market was landed on in the 90s.
I am disappointed in myself for this not being more, and I'm disappointed in myself for not giving more time so my guys could buy more too. Maybe this could have been a $20,000 win for me and thousands for them? Who knows.
But I'm also not sure how much more I could have milked this. The market had low liquidity and no one bought my 1c shares either. After getting my 4,400 shares or so at that 4c average, it looked like this began to run into the 6s and 7s so I thought maybe there was another sharp on it. But maybe that was just some confusion of people not knowing the broadcast was done. I couldn't tell. I kind of panicked.
I wanted to let my friends know, but I also wanted to protect myself from the blackhole of opaque Kalshi rule decision making that still looms over the markets. That plus recent losses prevented me from taking the cool, calm, and collected approach and putting $1,000 on it to get 15,000 shares.
It was a good win, and I'm grateful. I had circa-$4,000 profit when total market volume was only $65,000 which I think is pretty rad.