What Betting Markets Show About Trump
Get caught up.
Part of the plan for a second Trump administration was supposedly to “flood the zone:” inundate the media and the opposition with big speeches, executive orders, social media posts—you name it. Nine months into a frenetic presidential term like no other, the betting markets are backing up what Wall Street realized long ago when it comes to those speeches, orders and posts. Investors filed many of them under TACO, or “Trump Always Chickens Out,” and placed their bets accordingly.
Carolyn Silverman and Timothy L. O’Brien write in Bloomberg Opinion that Trump’s deluge strategy also has left an overwhelmed public with a unique question: What does one do when confronted by the reality that a president is a professional distraction machine and chaos agent?
It’s become clear to anyone watching that Trump often doesn’t follow through on what he promises, pledges or threatens. And the prediction markets bear that out, O’Brien and Silverman write. From tariffs to firing cabinet officials to what executive orders he would sign, bettors assigned an average probability of 34% to those events occurring within a specified timeframe. And in the end, only 28% actually happened.
The smart money seems to be on the 79-year-old Republican doing absolutely nothing, they write: You would have made a $12 net profit for every $100 you spent. See for yourself how the professionals are gaming out this moment in American history.