Category: Economics · Horizon: 45 days (markets closing by 18 Jul 2026) · Capital: $1,000 · Report date: 3 Jun 2026
Prices as of the 3 Jun 2026 ~20:46 UTC mirror snapshot + live Kalshi orderbook pulls at write time.
Bottom line. The Economics shelf this window is dominated by deep, efficiently-priced US macro-data ladders (May jobs 5 Jun, May CPI 10 Jun, FOMC 17 Jun) where I hold no informational edge — and where the few discrete rate-decision markets (Brazil Copom, Banxico, FOMC dissent count) screen as fairly priced or already repriced on public news. After a five-candidate diligence sweep with an adversarial second pass, exactly one thesis survived: a low conviction bet that the multi-week AAA gasoline decline does not fully stall by 8 Jun. I deploy $186 (19%) across two legs of that single thesis and hold $814 (81%) in cash. This is a thin-opportunity week and I am not going to pad it.
active market whose event category = 'Economics' closing within 45 days: ~400 markets across 131 series.market_snapshots row per market and cut everything with volume24h < 1500, bid-ask spread > 5¢, or already pinned (YES bid ≥ 95 / ask ≤ 5). That left 39 liquid candidates, clustered in a handful of series.rules, a multi-day intraday price history, the live depth-of-book, and primary-source news (central-bank statements, Focus/economist surveys, AAA/EIA data, Reuters/Bloomberg). Five candidate theses ran in parallel.Representative cut of the 39-candidate liquid screen and the verdict each reached. Prices are YES unless noted.
| Series / market | What it asks | Close | Px | Vol24h | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KXAAAGASW-26JUN08 | AAA US avg gas vs ladder, value on 8 Jun | 8 Jun | ladder | ~16k top | BUY NO ×2 legs |
| KXCBDECISIONBRAZIL-26JUN17 | Copom: Cut-25 vs Hold | 17 Jun | C25 57 / H 41 | 3.6k | PASS edge eaten |
| KXFOMCDISSENTCOUNT-26JUN-0 | Exactly 0 dissents at June FOMC | 17 Jun | 77 | 5.3k | PASS refuted |
| KXCBDECISIONMEXICO-26JUN25-HOLD | Banxico holds 25 Jun | 25 Jun | 93/97 | 0.8k | PASS efficient |
| KXAAAGASD-26JUN04 | AAA US avg gas, value on 4 Jun | 4 Jun | ladder | ~13k top | PASS well-priced |
| KXPAYROLLS-26MAY | May nonfarm payrolls ladder | 5 Jun | >100k 46 | 9.7k top | PASS = consensus |
| KXU3-26MAY | May U-3 unemployment ladder | 5 Jun | >4.3% 35 | 2.2k top | PASS = consensus |
| KXCPI-26MAY / KXCPIYOY-26MAY | May CPI MoM & YoY ladders | 10 Jun | >0.4% 73 | 9.4k top | PASS = consensus |
| KXFEDDECISION-26JUN-H0 | Fed holds at June meeting | 17 Jun | 96 | 91k | PASS pinned |
| KXCHAICUTS-26JUN04-T1 | AI = #1 cited reason in Challenger May report | 4 Jun | 92/94 | 4.7k | PASS ~priced + noisy |
Ordered highest-conviction first. Both deployed picks are the same underlying thesis (US gasoline keeps declining), expressed at two thresholds with different risk/reward. The concentration is intentional and flagged in the portfolio section — it is the only edge that cleared the screen.
Mispricing. NO wins if gas settles ≤ $4.22 on 8 Jun — i.e. it needs to fall just ~4¢ over five days versus an observed ~2.8¢/day pace. The market still assigns ~42% to gas being above $4.22 (a near-total stall). My forecast distribution (μ ≈ $4.19, σ ≈ $0.04) puts true NO ≈ 73%. The only path that loses is a fast crude-to-pump reversal — real, but less than 42% likely. This is the most robust expression: it pays unless the decline fully stalls.
Evidence (all public):
Tail risk (the cleanest way this loses): crude is rebounding (Brent ~$97–101, WTI ~$95–96; Iran/Hormuz strikes, 6th weekly inventory draw) and GasBuddy's De Haan warns relief “may be short-lived” with price-cycling states “running out of room” — a near-term stall/reversal that keeps gas above $4.22. Fortune, 3 Jun.
Mispricing. The higher-payout expression of the same view. NO wins if gas settles ≤ $4.20 (a ~6¢ fall, ≈ the market's own implied median). At μ ≈ $4.19 this is roughly a 58% NO proposition bought at 42¢ — a fatter edge but closer to a coin flip, because the strike sits right at the market's median. Included as a smaller, higher-beta sleeve of the gas thesis, not a second idea.
Evidence: identical to Pick 1 (same AAA trajectory, same crude lag). The distinction is purely where the strike sits relative to the forecast: $4.20 is the market's median, $4.22 is comfortably inside it.
Tail risk: same crude-rebound stall — and here it bites harder, since a settle of $4.20–$4.21 (a plausible deceleration outcome) resolves YES and this loses while Pick 1 still wins.
No third pick. The remaining four candidates were rejected — see §5. Forcing a Brazil, Banxico, Fed or US-data trade here would mean paying for prices that already reflect the public information.
| Pick | Side | Limit | Qty | Cost | Max payout | True p | EV $ | EV % | Conv. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KXAAAGASW-26JUN08-4.220 | NO | 0.61 | 200 | $122.00 | $200 | 73% | +$24.0 | +20% | Low |
| KXAAAGASW-26JUN08-4.200 | NO | 0.43 | 150 | $64.50 | $150 | 58% | +$22.5 | +35% | Low |
| Deployed | 350 | $186.50 | $350 | +$46.5 | +25% | ||||
| Cash reserve | $813.50 | — | — | — | 81% |
Blended EV ≈ +25% on deployed capital; dollar edge ≈ +$46.50. Deployment is held to 19% by design.
The screen is only as good as what it throws away. Four researched candidates and several whole series were cut.
The cleanest discrete edge on paper — and it already moved. Cut-25 repriced from ~31¢ (2 Jun) to a 79¢ intraday spike, settling ~57¢ on 3 Jun, when Brent fell ~20% off its 2026 peak (US–Iran ceasefire optimism), clearing the ~$114 “pause” trigger that the May Copom minutes had flagged. My calibrated cut probability is ~63%; Polymarket independently sits ~65%. At 57¢ that is a ~6¢ edge — below the 7¢ bar — and the HOLD tail is genuinely live: 2026 IPCA expectations have climbed 11 straight weeks to 5.04%, above the 4.5% ceiling, and the May IPCA print lands 12 Jun, pre-meeting. Edge eaten, two-sided risk. MercoPress 7 May · Boletim Focus via Rio Times · Polymarket
This one came back a confident BUY NO (“the most divided Fed since 1992 won't vote unanimously”) — and the adversarial pass killed it. The load-bearing claim was a cross-check that “Polymarket prices 0-dissents at only ~46%, so Kalshi's 77¢ is an overshoot.” On inspection that 46% figure was a stale page dated 21 May; the live Polymarket reads ~70% and has converged with Kalshi — no outlier. Worse, the April hawk dissents (Hammack, Kashkari, Logan) were over easing-bias language, not the rate vote, and that bias is likely dropped in June given the oil shock — removing their reason to dissent; and serial dissenter Miran resigned in May. Calibrated P(0 dissents) is ~60–65%, so NO at 24¢ carries only a fragile, model-dependent edge. Textbook example of a thesis built on an out-of-date receipt. Rejected. Fed statement 29 Apr · the stale 21-May page
Tempting to fade a 96% favorite — but the primary sources back it. On 7 May Banxico cut to 6.50% and issued its strongest hold guidance of the cycle (“the Board considers it appropriate to maintain the reference rate at its current level”), with BBVA and BofA framing it as the final cut and inflation still sticky (Apr headline 4.45%). Fair hold ≈ 93%; buying NO-on-HOLD at ~8¢ implies ~92% — about 1¢ of edge the wrong way. No trade. BBVA Research 8 May
The deepest, most-traded Economics markets, and they sit on top of published consensus: May NFP implied median ≈ +85k vs the Reuters survey +85k; U-3 modal 4.3% vs consensus 4.3%; CPI MoM ~0.45% and YoY ~4.2% both consistent with the energy-driven step-up. The one apparent gap — a 0.27% Cleveland Fed CPI nowcast — is a stale (5–7 May) artifact that predates the May gasoline surge; the gasoline math (~+0.3pp to headline) actually validates the market's 0.45%. These books digest the 8:30 ET prints within minutes; any genuine edge is captured at release, not held by me three days out with a January knowledge cutoff. PASS on all four.
The KXAAAGASD-26JUN04 daily ladder is well-calibrated — its implied median (~$4.236) sits exactly one day's decline below today, so no defensible edge. Cut without deep diligence: announcer/“mention”-style and idiosyncratic single-name markets (Musk net worth, Fed tweets, Stripe/OpenAI IPO-by-date, tech-layoff counts) and the Challenger “AI = #1 reason” market (already ~93¢ and definition-sensitive) — these fail the “skip mention/noise” rule or offer no quantifiable edge.
Data sources: live Kalshi mirror (trading_markets, trading_events, market_snapshots) for the universe, ladders and history; the Kalshi public API for depth-of-book at write time; web search/fetch for primary-source news. Prices captured 3 Jun 2026.
Disclaimer. Not investment advice. Every probability here is subjective — my own estimate, not a market truth — and 5-day gasoline forecasting in particular has real variance. Prediction-market contracts resolve to zero when wrong; you can lose the entire stake on any position. Do your own diligence and size to what you can afford to lose.