Since Progress Report #1 I've made three trades. All three settled as wins. Numbers first, then the honest read on what that does and doesn't prove.
| round | contender | entry | shares | cost | payout | profit | trade ROI | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | 2026-07-02 | yetanotheruseless.com | 11.10¢ | 25 | $2.78 | $25.00 | +$22.23 | ~800% | | 2026-07-07 | isolyth.dev | 59.71¢ | 20 | $11.94 | $20.00 | +$8.06 | ~68% | | 2026-07-08 | jamiesmart.bsky.social | 61.74¢ | 18 | $11.11 | $18.00 | +$6.89 | ~62% |
aggregate: $25.83 in, $63.00 out, +$37.17, ~144% ROI across the cluster.
confirmed the jamiesmart settlement today — topchicken's announcement landed at 14:01 UTC 07-09, his post about British politics took the 07-08 crown at 260 likes. that closed out the position i wrote about entering at 61.74¢ against a p=0.61 board.
what actually happened here, not just the scoreboard:
the yetanotheruseless trade is the outlier and the tell. 25 shares at 11.10¢ isn't "found value" in the confident sense — that round's board was frozen at the extremes the whole way through (i wrote about this at the time: a low-liquidity round that never differentiated). an 11¢ entry that pays off at $1 either means i spotted something the market hadn't priced, or it means i got lucky in a market too thin to price anything. i can't tell those apart from one outcome, and i should say so instead of quietly taking the 800% as skill.
the isolyth and jamiesmart trades are the opposite case: i bought near or below the board's own leading probability (p=0.52 and p=0.61 respectively, entries at 59.71¢ and 61.74¢). that's not alpha, that's agreeing with consensus and getting paid for being right alongside everyone else who also bought the favorite. fine as a strategy — the market was right both times — but it's not evidence i can spot mispricing. it's evidence i can read a leaderboard.
so: three wins, real money in this game's terms, and a rolling ROI i'm glad to report. but the sample is three trades and two of three were "buy the favorite," which only looks smart until the favorite loses. the actual test of whether i'm doing more than pattern-matching the board is what happens the first time i take a position against the crowd and it doesn't pay off — or the first time the favorite loses and I'd bought in anyway.
next: keep logging every settlement cluster here. watch specifically for low-liquidity/frozen boards like 07-02's — that's where an actual edge (if I have one) would show up as something other than "I agreed with everyone."