Ask HN: Who's making money during the election madness? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Who's making money during the election madness?

39 pointsedge1751 comments

Lot's of attention on social media, traditional media, etc. Who's cashing in on all this? Who benefits the most?

A black guy selling "Make America Great Again" Merchandise. Like seriously. Saw him on CNN too. Source => "Meet the man making money off Donald Trump" http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/...

Trump's campaign also cashed in on it. Related: "Anything with Trump name is selling fast" => http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/16/news/economy/trump-name-sell...

>A black guy selling "Make America Great Again" Merchandise. Like seriously. Saw him on CNN too

Probably you shouldn't watch CNN too much about politics.

> Probably you shouldn't watch CNN too much about politics.

Never said I did. I was scrolling through the channels on my TV and happened to see it. It caught my attention cos it was a black guy selling pro-Trump stuff at, and to a hostile all-white crowd.

After Brexit, I waited for the inevitable market overreaction. I took long positions in British ETFs. When the market recovered from the post-Brexit slump, I made money.

I'm betting that Trump isn't the disaster that the markets are currently predicting. I plan to do the same thing today.

Would you mind passing on a few links with regard to the trading tools / websites / apps you use to actually trade in the markets? I'm in the uk.

Interactive brokers, python for data analysis, java for execution. Lots of math which I don't know good introductory material for.

But this year has actually been pretty boring. As the markets have gotten more stable, all the quantitative alpha has vanished. My only good trade this year was Brexit.

Damn, I wanted to do the same, but I only had spare change free.

How are you betting against the "Trumpocalypse"? Is there anything more specific than broad market ETFs?

For the Trumpocalypse, I'm just carefully timing my purchases of SPY and a couple of others.

My general strategy is to accumulate SPY and a few other securities, so in reality I'm just reallocating my broader portfolio in the direction of SPY right now, and moving some purchases from the future to today.

Update: Markets are up, so no alpha for me. Curse you, efficient markets full of traders just as smart as me!

In hindsight, money was to be made in guns, military, refiners, pipelines, and coal. I made good bets on coal and guns for relatively little investment, but missed the others. I did buy cheap puts for a railroad with heavy Mexican market exposure, so I'll see on Fri afternoon when they expire.

Both social and traditional news media are structured to cash in on unique/improbable/dramatic events automatically. Look forward to a surge of retrospectives from all sides competing for attention that is monetized through ad spend.

As far as the advertisers? The ad buyers will be able to funnel outraged/ecstatic dollars into various foundations and funds. The various big brands will most likely begin shipping "feel good, come together" style ads that ostensibly encourage "healing" while simultaneously improving brand perception/equity that drives sales.

The small fries are the bookies, the forex traders, and the merch hawkers.

> Both social and traditional news media are structured to cash in on unique/improbable/dramatic events automatically.

How so, politician? Anything by design? Or simply the human nature to consume more media in "watershed" events? This could explain some of the media positioning in the last 18 months or so..

All private media (print, radio, and TV) make a lot from ad buys. At the local level, political consultants and mailhouses (those who print and send those glossy mailers -- the original tree-killing meme) make their living off elections.

In the long run, it's going to be an absolute bloodbath though.

There was a news article about teens in Macedonia making up to 3k a day by writing clickbait/gossip articles on Trump and cashing in on ads.

A friend of a friend had the chance to take out $1000 on 1000:1 odds 18 months ago on Donald Trump being president. He should have taken it...

Wtf? Why would anyone not take this bet? Even if you didn't think Trump was going to win (I didn't) this is obviously absurd EV.

Because $1000 is a lot of money for some people

No its I give you ten dollars, if trump wins you give me ten thousand dollars, else you keep my ten.

I was under the impression that it had to be $1000, but it doesn't matter anyway. If you bet $10 on everything that seems highly unlikely but may pay out a lot, you will end up losing money very quickly.

Why do you say that? its called selling risk premium... I don't see many insurance underwriters blowing up!

Day traders. Gold rallied. US dollar and the Mexican peso plummeted.

I and many others made a decent amount.

Doomsday prepper websites

Bookies taking bets on the election.

Only a moron would have bet on trump with 80% chance of a Hilary win estimated. Heck, even trump clearly didn't think he would win judging by his claims the election wold be rigged before it began.

Only a moron would believe such odds, especially after happened to Brexit (odds were the same on the night before the result).

Up until a few hours before trump took Florida, the traditional news sites were discussing how big a sweep for Clinton and if Republic would loose the house.

I won £20 with a £5 stake at my local bookies. Wouldn't really count that as 'making money' though.

If the bookies are doing their jobs right, they'll make money either way. They set up the market, and the people who think Trump's odds are better than 20 percent will pay 20c for the shot at winning a bit less than a dollar, the bookie shouldn't let them buy it unless there's also someone who thinks $0.80 to win a bit less than a dollar sounds good. The bookie then holds onto the full dollar they get, and then pay out (say) 97 cents on {inauguration, electoral college vote, whatever}.

If there was a 1% chance of outcome x, and I offered you 1000 to 1 odds, would you be a moron to take the bet, just because there is only 1% chance of winning it? Please call me.

This moron put in EUR 100 yesterday at 4:1.

I must be a moron then as I won £200+ Man, that stupid is really feeling bad right now.

Sarcasm is the mark of an immature child.

Improve yourself.

I think sarcasm is a pretty appropriate response to being called a moron.

Bets for a Trump win were reasonable as a hedge.

I was honestly going to place a bet on Hillary winning the election, I thought it would be a guaranteed way to make money. I didn't end up doing it. Honestly I actually wish that I did, even in hindsight.

worth it

You, given perfect knowledge, would choose to lose money? You must have more money than sense.

Yep, just $100 or so. I'm not a US citizen, so I can't vote. It would just be a statement. In fact, maybe I'll donate $100 to a climate change NGO right now.

There we go, that's a better statement: https://imgur.com/a/lPWRw

That makes more sense. I'm glad we had this discussion.

I actually did this. Just a small amount, because any time I place bets with less than 90% probability I tend to do badly. I bet just enough that if Hillary won, she would buy me a coffee, but if she lost, at least I'd get an amazing day of TV viewing.

I got an amazing day of TV, and the surge in Bitcoin's price tonight has almost balanced out my betting losses anyway.

Biotech ETFs are way up today (almost 10%) - it looks like with the fear of Hillary capping medical costs now gone, a lot of folks are seeing more long term value:

http://finance.yahoo.com/quote/IBB?ltr=1 http://finance.yahoo.com/quote/XBI?ltr=1

I made about $200 trading a small amount of money on the forex markets while I watched the live coverage. I was surprised the yen didn't drop that much, but I also missed the article about the BOJ saying they would intervene.

I could bet these guys made some money: https://senddickstodonald.com/

Oh wow. I would really like to be a fly on the wall to see what kind of mail the White House has been receiving for the last however many years...

Although it probably gets old after a week.

I put £60 on at 7/2, which was particularly good as it was £30 from me and a £30 matching bet from the bookmaker as a new customer.

YouTubers making parody videos. Social Blade estimates a viral video of about 6m views could earn between $3k to $23k in ad revenue.

Folks shorting stock futures.

Alex Jones and friends.

You could probably have made some spare change if you got a few decent domains and hired some people to right blogspam for you all throughout this election.

Pretty much anyone who benefits from more loose monetary policy from the US. UK stocks heavily exposed to the US market are up 4-5% (or at least, mine are.)

stock brokers will have a sweet day tomorrow while the market crashes.

Attention--w-h-o-r-e-s make money during such events.

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