Either can be had at longer than evens

The chart shows the latest betting on who will be the next President in Betfair’s now £30m market. The amount that’s been gambled so far is by far a record this far out but the interesting thing is that the uncertainty that still remains over who is going to be heading the ticket for either side.

By contrast the other big market on WH2020 outcome on which will be the winning party has the Democrats and Republicans both trading at evens.

In time terms we are till a long way from the nominations being finally resolved and clearly a lot can happen in the meantime between now and the party conventions in August. One element, of course, is their ages. Trump is just about to celebrate his 74th birthday and Biden is 77 and clearly there is an actuarial risk of one or both of them not making it. On top of that there are all the uncertainties relating to each of them politically.

Probably Biden is seen as being most at risk with the accusation against him and the fact that at time he can appear to be very frail. Trump is Trump with all that entails and he’s now trying to tar the Biden campaign with what he’s calling Obamagate.

My view is that the market are overpricing the risk

Mike Smithson