InTrade can be moved by less than a carrot

This Morn­ing Glenn Reynolds in a post about trends noted the fol­low­ing:

InTrade still has Obama ahead, but I’m not sure why infor­ma­tion like this doesn’t have a big­ger impact.

That’s a good point but some­thing hit me.

Let’s say I’m a per­son who wants to influ­ence the nar­ra­tive but can’t con­tribute legally or has already reached the legal limit, how can I make a dif­fer­ence financially?

InTrade is an easy choice.

Let’s take a look at InTrade today in terms of the president’s re-​election:

Let’s do the math, $5.69 a share 223 shares $5.79 x 223 = $1291.71

So it would cost $1291.71 to buy up every share at the low­est price available.

To put this in per­spec­tive Sarah Jes­sica Parker put on a $40,000 per plate fundraiser for the pres­i­dent in June. All those shares can be pur­chased by 3.2% of a sin­gle plate:

[cap­tion id=“attachment_39990” align=“aligncenter” width=“450”] This is one $40,000 Sarah Jes­sica Parker fundrais­ing plate[/caption]

That’s how much it would cost to move Intrade for a day. less than a car­rot on a fundrais­ing plate.

“But DaT­e­chGuy” you say, “Why would peo­ple just throw money away on InTrade when they can use it else­where in the campaign?”

Au con­traire, first of all. it’s no more throw­ing away money than any other polit­i­cal cam­paign dona­tion and sec­ondly if they man­age to pull off the win, then not only will the reward be the same as any other polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tion, but you might even get a direct cash return that might not oth­er­wise be possible.

If I was the Obama Cam­paign I’d make sure those InTrade futures didn’t drop below 50% till the very end of the elec­tion, it’s short money for a vital talk­ing point par­tic­u­larly when soon it will be the only mea­sure that can be manip­u­lated in her favor.