A structured curriculum for systematic event contract trading. From absolute basics to mechanical trading systems. 20 articles across 6 levels. Read in order or jump to your level.
Event contracts, binary outcomes, order books, implied probability. The basics you need before anything else.
Three market types, three different games. Overround, commission, fees — and why your choice of platform type matters more than your provider.
Decimal, fractional, American, moneyline. Converting between formats, calculating implied probability, and understanding overround — the bookmaker's hidden tax.
The complete workflow: research → probability estimate → price check → sizing → execution → review. One trade, step by step, from data to P&L.
The mathematically optimal formula for position sizing. Full Kelly, fractional Kelly, and why most traders need to bet smaller than they think. Live calculator included.
Why position sizing matters more than edge. Drawdown simulation, ruin probability, and the cold math of why even profitable traders go bust when they size wrong.
Why 50 uncorrelated prediction market positions behave like a diversified portfolio — and how to build one. Correlation, diversification, concentration risk.
Fixed, proportional, Kelly-based staking. Drawdown limits, stop-loss rules, and knowing when to walk away. The operational discipline that protects your capital.
Two fundamentally different games. When you're a direction trader (the market is wrong) vs. an arb trader (two markets disagree). Both work — the discipline is different.
Using Pinnacle lines, futures markets, and institutional forecasts as pricing oracles. When the reference disagrees with the PM, the PM is almost certainly wrong.
German-language sources, Bundesliga press conferences, kicker.de training reports — information the anglophone PM market can't read. Your structural advantage.
Why contracts under 10¢ systematically destroy capital. The CEPR research on 300,000+ Kalshi contracts, and what it means for your portfolio construction.
Hold to resolution ($1 or $0) or trade the price movement before the event? Two different strategies, different edge sources, different liquidity requirements.
Contracts with decay ("will X happen by December 31?") vs. contracts without ("who wins the election?"). The options analogy that changes how you trade event contracts.
Delta, Theta, Gamma, Vega, Rho — translated from options theory to binary event contracts. Where the analogy holds, where it breaks, and why the intuition is still valuable.
What works: oscillators in range-bound markets, support/resistance at round numbers, volume analysis. What doesn't: trend following, Elliott Wave, moving averages. The analogy is interest rates, not equities.
From research to execution to review. The complete process for turning prediction market trading from gambling into a repeatable, measurable discipline.
What to track, how to review, which metrics matter. Hit rate alone is meaningless — calibration, EV capture, Kelly adherence, and process quality are what count.
How to backtest when your instruments are binary, your history is short, and your market structure keeps changing. Pitfalls: survivorship bias, overfitting, look-ahead contamination.
When is your edge real vs. noise? Sample sizes for binary outcomes, p-values, confidence intervals, and why 50 winning trades proves less than you think.
Systematic rules for entry, exit, and sizing that remove emotion from the process. If/then logic, scoring matrices, and the discipline of mechanical execution.
The transition path: which parts of your system to automate first, when human judgment still adds value, and how to build the pipeline from signal to execution.
Joseph Buchdahl — Systematic, evidence-based sports trading. Mathematical rigour applied to markets most people approach with gut feeling.
Eric Siegel — Data-driven prediction for real decisions. The principles behind every model.
Nassim Taleb — Why we misjudge risk, and how to build systems that benefit from uncertainty.
William Poundstone — The history and math of the Kelly criterion. Shannon, Thorp, and Kelly.
David Aronson — Scientific method applied to trading signals. Hypothesis testing, data mining bias, statistical validation.
Robert Carver — Building and running mechanical trading systems. Position sizing, diversification, automation.