Selling 96¢ Blockade YESers Their Own Cope
Iran told us to pound sand on Bloomberg this morning. The market still thinks there's a 4% chance we hug it out by Wednesday.
Bloomberg dropped a piece today where Iran explicitly said they will not sit down with the US. Meanwhile, Polymarket is still quoting a non-zero chance that we announce the end of the blockade by Wednesday. Somebody's holding a bag and it's not us.
Today's slate is basically three flavors of the same trade: selling near-certainties for the last couple pennies. Yes, we know. Picking up nickels. But when the AI keeps flagging A grades on 96¢+ NOs, you shut up and click.
US announces end of Iranian blockade by August 12, 2026?
Position: NO at 96¢. Edge score: 88.
Market says there's a 4% chance the US ends the blockade in the next 48 hours. Our model says it's closer to 0.01% — basically a rounding error.
The edge is simple: Iran publicly ruled out direct negotiations *today*. There's no diplomatic runway, no leaked draft, no back-channel chatter. Just a market closing Wednesday with nothing on the tape.
What kills it: a genuine surprise announcement out of nowhere. Geopolitics can turn on a Truth Social post. But you're getting paid 4¢ to insure against a coin flip that isn't flipping. We'll take it.
Will Yabloko win the next Novgorod Oblast Parliament elections?
Position: NO at 99¢. Edge score: 82.
This is the trade that makes non-degens ask "why are you doing this to yourself." You're risking 99¢ to make 1¢. Rent money this is not.
But Yabloko is a marginalized opposition party in Putin's Russia. They are not winning a regional parliament. They are not winning a middle school student council. The true probability here is somewhere between "lottery ticket" and "struck by lightning while cashing lottery ticket."
What kills it: a Polymarket resolution dispute or some off-chain weirdness where the market gets voided in a way you don't like. That's really the only tail. The actual political outcome is not in question.
Size this one appropriately (read: small). It's a yield play, not a hero ball.
Israel election: will Likud lose seats?
Position: YES at 91¢. Edge score: 68.
Market implied: 91%. Our number: 96%. Not a massive edge on paper, but the polling data is doing the heavy lifting here.
Likud won 32 seats in 2022. They've been polling well below that number for basically all of 2025 and 2026. Elections are late October. Unless Bibi pulls a rabbit out of a hat, the seat count is going down.
What kills it: a late-cycle rally-around-the-flag moment or a security event that shifts the electorate hard right. Not impossible in that region. But you'd need a *big* swing to close a 5–7 point polling gap in ~10 weeks.
This is the one to actually size on. Real edge, real event, real timeline.
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GL out there. If the blockade ends by Wednesday we're all logging off forever.
Our Calls From This Date
These are the exact picks our AI flagged on August 10.