Interesting Tradesports Development

Tradesports has added a market on how many seats in the House the Donks will pick up in November. I've been waiting for a market like this to appear as it gets at the idea of what (if any) margin will appear. It's also useful as a market in that it gets laterally at the issue of control, as well as subtly gauging movement in opinion (it was very useful like this with the electoral college vote aggregate contracts in 2004). In other words, the control market tries to anticipate who will win, but this market by what margin. And the margin of seats is the key to governing.

Anyhoo, the key for a market like this is to find where the mid-point is, where exactly the market breaks to 50/50. Currently, that mid-point is right between "Pickup of 14.5" and "Pickup of 19.5"--in other words, the market is definitely leading to Democrat control of the House in the control market contract (presently trading at $40 for the Republicans to hold), but is only leaning toward a wafer-thin margin, countering the Post's article yesterday anticipating a 30-40 seat blowout for the Donks.

Yips! from Robbo: Let me just add two cents here. I correctly predicted the last bottom of the GOP hold market. Of course, Foley-Gate skewed things and killed off the Mo coming out of the White House, sending the value of these shares back down again. Based on what I've seen the past couple days, I'm predicting right here and now that the market has bottomed out again and will start to rise.