News sources are motivated to get clicks, to appeal to certain audiences, and to retain tribal customers. None of these create incentives for truth. You can seek out smart, well-informed and principled journalists who will prioritize truth-seeking over money-making. There are some. But the fact remains you are relying on character to override incentives. With prediction markets, incentives and truth are naturally aligned. This makes them a powerful and valuable resource imo, even if there is a lot of scumminess that comes along for the ride. The insiders, more than anyone, are contributing to the truth signal.
So the feedback from prediction market turns around, so you can essentially buy events if you put enough money in.
But also motivated to bend the truth to their bet as the journalist in Israel found.
See the loop?
First, you have inside traders. Then, among legitimate bettors, you have smart people using multiple data sources (not just the "news") and doing sophisticated analysis that most journalists cannot do, and are not motivated to do -- again, because their incentives are different.
You can do research to know the US would strike, there's no other point in moving multiple carriers over to somewhere. But exactly WHEN is not researchable. This applies to most other bets. So lets stop pretending there's anything more than 2 cohorts, insiders and degenerate gamblers.
I've been doing it profitably myself for almost 10 years now. I have zero special inside knowledge, and no access to any other non-public information.
> Will the US strike Iran by X date
Last year I did think the market for a strike on Iran was significantly underpriced given the information and conditions within a specific frame of time.
I don't think every smart person can just pop into prediction markets and print money, but I know many smart people who are long-term winners. I also don't try to knock people as degenerate when they have genuine talent.