A question about tradesports: How do you bet against a candidate? Are there futures contracats like on the stock market, or is there some other mechanism for betting that a contracts price will decline?
Intrade
You are actually making a bet with another individual. Tradesports/Intrade is not a bookmaker where you bet against the house, but more of a broker.
If Edwards is at 7.0, it means that the last trade, someone bet 7.0 that Edwards would win, and someone else bet 93.0 that Edwards would not win. The winner of the bet will collect 100.0. In this case the contract value is $10, so the above bet would be $0.70 vs. $9.30.
Let's say that you ask 7.0 for Edwards (you are seeking someone willing to bet 7.0 that Edwards will win), and later the value of Edwards declines. You might be able to bid 5.0 on Edwards at a later date, and close out your position, giving you a net gain of 2.0 (you have bet a total of 98.0 with a guarantee of 100.0).
I'd think if you were wanting to make money this far out, you would be trying to anticipate price shifts, rather than predict the ultimate winner.
Though you would need to first buy Edwards, correct? So if I think that Edwards will drop from 8 to 4 in the next week, I would first have to buy Edwards contracts at the current price, and couldn't make any money, right? I'd have to wait until I think he's undervalued, buy, wait till he's overvalued, and then sell. But if you think someone will make a steady decline and end up not winning, (such as Clinton, who I'm really thinking about), is there a way to make money?
