Prediction Market Correction
Card 788 is counted
In 1906, 787 people at a cattle show wrote a name, an address and a guess at one ox's weight on a numbered card. Six crowds now put a percent on the Fed, the Senate, the strait and the storm season. We read all six each morning, and we count.
You're on the list. Your first question comes with the next morning's letter. The weight of the ox is a little further down.
Francis Galton borrowed every card and counted them. One guess at a time, the crowd was all over the scale. Put together, it was right.
Dressed weight in pounds. Figures from Galton's worksheets, as re-examined by Kenneth Wallis in Statistical Science, 2014.
Galton's 1907 article in Nature put the middle card at 1,207 lb and the ox at 1,198 lb, 9 lb apart. His own worksheets say 1,208 and 1,197. The crowd was 11 lb off.
One crowd, one question, and a scale to check it against. Today six crowds put a percent on tomorrow, and they rarely agree.
A question lives in the letter from the morning the crowds split until the day it settles.
Some mornings go back to a question that just settled and grade every crowd that carried it.
Chance of a rate hike at the Fed's September 16, 2026 meeting
The futures market at the CME is where banks and bond desks hedge the Fed's next decision. When a benchmark like it carries the question, it sits on the last row of our board. That decision moves the yield on your money market fund.
On July 29, with the odds of a hike at one in three, the Fed held. Three members voted to raise.
From 1934 to 2018 there were 22 midterm elections. You'll get one count like it each morning, tied to that day's question and the record it comes from.
We'll print that the record sides with Kalshi, because that's a finding. A forecast in our own voice never makes the page, hedged or not.
We take no fees, run no fund, and never tell you to put money anywhere.
Card 788 is counted. Your first question comes with the next morning's letter.