3 models. 83 days. 600 trades. The Crowd beat The Contrarian by $65. The Arb never got off the ground. Full results and post-mortem below. Test 2 launches Jun 15.
The Crowd won because it traded volume. 513 trades across 83 days. 69% of them were sports markets, where conviction is cleanest: favorites at 83% average entry probability win 86% of the time. The math checks out.
The edge here is real but narrow. Average win was $19.57 on a $100 bet. The conviction gate (65/35) filters out the noise. What's left is a steady drip of small, high-probability wins, punctuated by occasional $100 losses when the favorite collapses.
What to watch in Test 2: We tighten the gate to 75/25 as the new challenger. Fewer trades, higher confidence. Does stricter selection improve the return-per-trade, or does it just cut volume without improving quality?
97% win rate sounds better than it is. At an average entry of 13.9% probability, Model B was risking $100 to win $16. Every trade. The two losses wiped out the gains from 12 wins each. That's the structural trap of fading longshots with flat sizing.
The thesis isn't wrong. Crowds do overprice unlikely events. But you need position sizing that reflects the actual edge, not a flat $100 regardless of odds. Betting $100 to win $16 at 13.9% probability has almost zero expected edge above breakeven.
What to watch in Test 2: Model B gets retired as a standalone model. The insight lives on in a new variant that pairs the contrarian signal with Kelly-adjusted sizing instead of flat bets.
The Arb never had enough to work with. The strategy requires Polymarket and Kalshi to disagree on the same market by 10+ points. That happens, but rarely. The Spread surfaces 1 to 5 qualifying pairs per day on a good day, zero on most days.
6 trades placed, all still open, all in long-duration political markets that never approached resolution. The concept is valid. The data coverage wasn't there. Model C is inconclusive, not disproven. We'll revisit when Kalshi coverage improves.
Model A is the new control. Two challengers are trying to beat it. Same $1,000 start. Same 30-day window. Different hypotheses.
No trades logged yet. First picks will appear after the next pipeline run.
All trades are paper (hypothetical) and for informational purposes only. This is not financial advice and is not an invitation to copy trades. Prediction markets carry risk of total loss. We're publishing this experiment to be transparent about how the system works and to hold ourselves accountable to a verifiable track record. The rules are documented above. The ledger is unedited.