Market Notes
Dated notes on what the market did and what it means. Where the price moved, why it probably moved, and how to read the next one.
- Market Notes3 min
What the summer did to the board, which was almost nothing
Three months of camps, trades and injuries, and 21 of 32 Super Bowl prices moved by a fifth of a percentage point or less. The stillness is the finding.
- Market Notes3 min
The Rams were the summer's only real move
Every other team on the board shifted less than 1.4 percentage points across three months. The Rams moved 3.9, and there is an unusually clean reason behind it.
- Market Notes3 min
Where the model and the market disagree most
Eight gaps on the 15 August board. We could explain three of them. Saying which five we could not is the more useful half.
- Market Theory3 min
What a frozen model is good for
Our projection has not been re-run since 16 May. That is a limitation worth stating plainly, and it does not make the number useless.
- Market Theory4 min
When books tie, and what our own sorting hides
On nearly half the Super Bowl board more than one book holds the best price. Here is how we pick between them, and why that choice is not a fact about sportsbooks.
- Market Theory3 min
The same view costs less in a smaller market
A book's margin scales with the number of outcomes it has to price. The same opinion costs roughly three times as much to hold on the Super Bowl board as on a division board.
- Market Theory3 min
Nobody sharpens a number nobody bets
Five books land within a few percent of each other at the top of the board and twice as far apart at the bottom. The gap measures attention, not carelessness.
- Market Theory3 min
The division board is the one no book owns
On most futures markets one book holds the best price more often than the rest. On the division board four books are within two of each other, and that is structural.
- Market Theory3 min
A win total is two decisions, not one
Every other futures market asks whether something will happen. A win total asks which number, and at what price. Collapsing the two is how a bettor ends up holding a position they did not choose.
- Market Notes3 min
One book gets you the best price half the time
The best-covering sportsbook on the current Super Bowl board still leaves a reader short on sixteen of thirty-two teams, and the shortfall averages about a quarter of the payout.
- Market Notes3 min
Eight win totals moved a full game
Championship prices sat still all summer. Win totals did not, and every one of the eight moves has a reported cause behind it.
- Market Notes3 min
Where the Super Bowl board is widest
Five books, one championship market, and a 233% difference in what the same position pays.
- Market Theory3 min
Why the Gap Exists
A number moves all week and the team it describes never changes. What closing line value measures, and why it is knowable before the season is played.
- Market Notes2 min
Every board sums past one hundred
Add up what a sportsbook says about the Super Bowl and the answer comes to 124%. The extra is the price of admission.