(((Legend: Still no idea what this chart represents. Bookmakers’ odds or betting exchanges’ ones???)))
Mike Smithson’s strategy:
My current betting strategy is to seek to make the most of the first round. I’ve just put a spread bet on [Socialist Segolene Royal (the woman)] on the SpreadFair betting exchange [*]. The market gives 25 points to the eventual winner and 10 points to the runner-up which seems ideally suited to the French electoral system. The Royal BUY price was at 12.6 so assuming that she makes the run-off [;] my maximum loss would be 2.6 times my stake value. If she wins I’d get 12.4 times the unit stake which offers better value than anything else that is available. Irrespective of whether Royal becomes the overall winner her spread price will surely rise if she makes the final run-off as seems likely. At that stage I hope to have the option of being able to close down part of the bet and take a profit there and then.
[*] SpreadFair = The world’s first spread-betting exchange. — Authorized and regulated by the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority — Owned by Cantor Fitzgerald —
BEWARE MISTER SMITHSON: Besides Socialist Segolene Royal, you have plenty of extreme-Left candidates who will reduce the Royal vote share on D day. Same idea for Republican Nicolas Sarkozy: the extreme-Right candidate (Jean-Marie Le Pen) and the candidate representing the hunters and fishers [!!] will reduce the Sarkozy vote share.
I would not bet on Socialist Segolene Royal making it to the second round: the real political campaign has just begun. Stupid laws in France compel the media to give equal air time to each of the 12 candidates, in the final month of the campaign. Which means that Sunday April 22, many of the “small” candidates will have seduced some gullible voters and reduce the score of the big candidates.
Republican Nicolas Sarkozy will beat them all —conditional that Centrist Francois Bayrou will not make it to the second round. (In that unforeseen case, all bets are off.)
Previous: Next French President: Republican NICOLAS SARKOZY 63%
External Link: Le Nouvel Observateur + NewsFutures – (not prediction markets – scoring rules)
UPDATE: MIDAS ORACLE PROCLAIMS REPUBLICAN NICOLAS SARKOZY AS THE FRENCH PRESIDENT-ELECT.
