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Traders placed over $1bn in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/world@quokk.au
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[–] 2 points 5 months ago (3 children)

That's not how it works. The handful are taking the money from the tens of thousands, that's exactly what's odd.

A mitigating circumstance would be if the same handful lost as much in other bets.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    That's kind of how betting works - few guess right and they win the money that everyone else lost.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    I'm guessing the article is about suspiciously large bets placed shortly before important events, mostly Trump's announcements, in the absence of similarly large losses from the same people — as happened multiple times in the past year.

    People don't typically bet millions at once on an underdog.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago*

    Well, no, but that's why I'm noting that additional context would be in place. If the account was created yesterday and they bet millions on something they couldn't possibly have known, then yeah, that's suspicious. However, yesterday there was a similar article about 150 people who made a similarly good bet, but once you did the math these people bet $5,700 per person on average. That isn't particularly suspicious.

    Edit: I just realized it was this same article

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