On the spreads Biden has moved up from 281 ECVs a month ago to 313 this afternoon
My main betting on the White House Race has been on the SportingIndex spread betting markets.
I bought at 284 Electoral College Votes and the latest split is SELL 307 and BUY 313. So I could, if I wanted, get out of my position this afternoon and get 23 times my stake even if, in the election itself, Biden does worse than that.
Of course if the polling continues to be as good for Biden as the latest CNN poll with a 16% national lead over Trump then you can see the current buy level being attractive.
At the moment I’m staying in but am not extending my position. The big risk with spread betting is the possibility of big losses if you’ve got it wrong. So if in the election Biden only gets 240 ECVs I could face a loss of 44 times my stake level.
The essential fact of betting in this form is that the more you are right the more you win and the more you are wrong the more you lose.
SPIN is offering a range of bets that cut back the downside risk. The Joe Biden 270-Ups markets mean that your maximum loss will be at 270 ECVs even if he came out with far fewer ones than that. This is at a price. The current BUY level on this market is 50 meaning that you only start to make money once Biden top 320 ECVs.
Back at GE2017 I SOLD the Tories at 383 MPs. They got 318 which gave me a return of 75 times my stake level – my most profitable bet. This more than made up for my losses at GE2015.