# Kalshi Politics — Mispricing Audit (v4, archetype-targeted) — 2026-07-30

Date: 2026-07-30
Source: https://kalshi-audits.pages.dev/2026-07-30-kalshi-politics-mispricing-audit-v4

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# Kalshi Politics — Mispricing Audit (v4, archetype-targeted, precedent-fed)

Report date 2026-07-30 · Horizon 45 days (through 2026-09-13) · Capital $2,500 · Universe: `targets.json` allowlist (generated 2026-07-30 16:40Z)

0Picks
12Logged rejects
100%Cash ($2,500)
84Markets screened
1Stage-2 survivor

## Executive summary — an efficient week; cash is the position

**Zero picks.** Every open market in the Tier-1 and Tier-2 allowlisted series closing inside the horizon trades at band extremes — 50 of 53 Tier-1 markets sit at ≤9¢ or ≥92¢, and Tier 2 looks the same. Only two markets came anywhere near deployable:

- **KXBLANCHEJUDICIARY-27-26SEP01** (NO at 89¢, thin-favorite band) — the single Stage-2 survivor. Full diligence below; rejected because the thesis is _today's_ headline and the specialist book already repriced on it (46¢ → 12¢ intraday). Final edge ≈1¢, below the 3¢ slippage floor.
- **KXTRUMPTHUNEOUT-27JAN01-SEP** (NO at 74¢, core band) — failed the hard liquidity floor: live volume24h = 423 < 500. The floor exists because 98 of 136 historical picks entered zero-volume books and that cohort had negative edge. Not waivable.

v4 explicitly treats this outcome as correct: _"zero is acceptable and correct in an efficient week."_ The $2,500 stays in cash (well above the 10% reserve minimum; inside the expected 40–70%+ cash range for an efficient week).

## Stage 0 — Universe & mechanical funnel

Candidates came only from `targets.json` (72 Tier-1 series, 45 Tier-2 series). Markets closing 2026-07-30 → 2026-09-13, status active:

| Stage | Tier 1 | Tier 2 | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open markets in horizon | 53 | 31 | All other allowlisted series close beyond Sep 13 (verified: KXTRUMPADMINLEAVE, KXFEDERALCHARGE, KXARREST, KXBILLS, KXTRUMPPARDONS et al. close Dec 2026 – Jan 2029) |
| Survive vol24h ≥ 500 (live) | 10 | 10 | Live Kalshi numbers, not file snapshots |
| Survive spread ≤ 5¢, bid < 95¢, ask > 5¢ | 2 | 1 | KXNYTCHARGE, KXMARTINDNCOUT-AUG01, KXBLANCHEJUDICIARY-SEP01 |
| In a playable entry band (40–89¢ either side) | 0 | 1 | KXBLANCHEJUDICIARY-SEP01 (NO at 89¢, thin-favorite band) |

Tier 1 was worked first per v4; the slate proved thin (zero playable), which put Tier 2 in scope. No Tier-3 entries exist in this week's file.

## Stage 1–2 — The one candidate, in full

### KXBLANCHEJUDICIARY-27-26SEP01 archetype: multi-news-other Tier 2 REJECTED

Will Source Agencies report the Senate Judiciary Committee reports Todd Blanche's AG nomination to the full Senate before Sep 1, 2026? · close 2026-09-01T03:59Z (early close on event)

**Rules.** Resolves YES on Source-Agency reporting of the committee reporting the nomination to the full Senate. `rules_secondary` contains only sourcing standards — no dated resolver clarifications. Resolver risk: low (clean, single discrete event; explicit deduction 0 pts).

**Precedents consulted.** No direct KXBLANCHEJUDICIARY rows in the store (the AUG01 leg is not yet settled). Nearest on-point: _Precedent: KXAGCONF-26-JUN15 resolved NO — price a Cabinet confirmation clock from formal transmittal with a five-to-six-week process floor (paperwork → hearing → markup → floor)_, and _KXAGCONF-26-JUL01 resolved NO — the resolver keys "first announced pick" to the current vacancy via the ticker stem_. Both support strict, mechanical readings of confirmation-process markets and support NO here.

**News diligence (primary sources, all dated).**

- Jul 15: confirmation hearing held (Senate Judiciary Committee notice).
- Jul 29 (evening): Grassley postpones the Jul 30 committee vote "as work continues to secure sufficient support." Cornyn and Tillis demand _written_ assurances that the $1.776B "Anti-Weaponization Fund" is permanently dead and that IRS tax immunity covers only existing audits (NPR, Roll Call, Washington Post).
- Jul 30 (midday): **Trump posts he has "no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd's name… and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office,"** keeping Blanche as acting AG (PBS/AP). This is the event that cratered the market intraday.
- Senate calendar: in session the first week of August only, then out until **Sep 14** — past this market's deadline (Roll Call, official 2026 Senate calendar). YES therefore requires a markup in the Aug 3–7 window _and_ both holdouts flipping (committee is 12R–10D; one defection makes 11–11, which fails to report).

> **Prob: 15% pre-market → 10% final** (blended toward a liquid book). Pre-market number was committed after rules+news, before opening the book. The residual 10% respects Tillis's "could be rescheduled as early as Tuesday" and Cornyn's "solvable in seconds" — Trump's posts reverse often, and the two holdouts publicly want a path to yes.

**Entry context (live book, ~16:45Z).** YES 11/14, NO 86/89; NO-ask depth ≈120 contracts; vol24h 18,281 (specialist-dense, >5k rule triggered); OI 14,610. Price path (signal_snapshots): 43/44 on Jul 29, 46/50 at 12:23Z today, 11/14 now — the entire move happened on the Trump post, hours before this audit ran.

Reject — public-info-only / 48h price-move rule.

NO at 89¢ vs a ~90¢ fair value is ≈1¢ of edge — under the 3¢ slippage floor, inside the 85–89¢ half-size band, in a book where the >5k-volume rule demands a _stronger, more specific_ edge than "I read the same news the specialists repriced on four hours ago." Every element of the thesis is public and already in the price. Two other live strategies flipped sides on this exact ticker within 24h (YES Jul 29, NO Jul 30) — churn on headlines, the pattern v4 exists to avoid.

## Stage 3 — Reject log

| Ticker | Side@¢ | Prob | Archetype | Cluster | Reason |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KXBLANCHEJUDICIARY-27-26SEP01 | NO@89 | 15→10% | multi-news-other | blanche-ag-confirmation | Public-info-only: post-news specialist book; ~1¢ edge < 3¢ slippage floor |
| KXTRUMPTHUNEOUT-27JAN01-SEP | NO@74 | — | departure/ouster | thune-leadership | Liquidity floor: live vol24h 423 < 500 (only core-band candidate in universe; floor not waivable) |
| KXAGCONF-26JUN05-SEP01 | NO@97 | ~3% | confirmation/enact | blanche-ag-confirmation | Deep-favorite band (≥90¢). Precedent-backed NO (KXAGCONF-26-JUN15 process-floor lesson) but max win ≤3% of risk |
| KXNYTCHARGE-27JAN01-26SEP01 | —@7 | — | legal-action | nyt-af1 | Band-dead: YES 7¢ tail / NO 95¢ deep favorite (passed all mechanical cuts) |
| KXMARTINDNCOUT-26MAY-AUG01 | —@9 | — | departure/ouster | martin-dnc | Band-dead: YES 9¢ / NO 95¢, <2 days to close |
| KXHEGSETHOUT-26APR-SEP01 | NO@93 | — | multi-news-other | hegseth-out | Already an active pick; also ≥90¢ deep-favorite band |
| KXKASHOUT-26APR-26SEP01 | —@5 | — | departure/ouster | kash-out | Mechanical (ask ≤5¢ tail); AUG01 sister leg is an existing pick |
| KXLEAVEPOWELLGOV-26SEP01 | —@5 | — | departure/ouster | powell-governor | Band-dead 2/5 book; cluster already has a live leg (AUG01 NO) |
| KXSANCTIONRUSSIA-26JUL | —@8 | — | confirmation/enact | russia-sanctions | Liquidity floor (455 < 500) and band-dead |
| KXCRITICALITY-26AUG-OKLO | —@9 | — | multi-news-other | reactor-criticality | Band-dead: YES 9¢ / NO 92¢, closes in <2 days |
| KXCBDECISIONJAPAN-26JUL30-HOLD | —@99 | — | scheduled-process | boj-july | Mechanical (bid ≥95¢); resolves within hours |
| KXSENATECONFIRM-26APR29-BMAT | —@91 | — | confirmation/enact | senate-confirmations | Mechanical: spread 9¢ > 5¢, vol24h 306 < 500 |

No continuous-number theses reached Stage 3 this run — the Stage-0 classifier plus horizon filter left none in the slate. No markets outside the v4 universe were researched.

## Stage 4 — Portfolio

### Position sizes & limits

None. $2,500 (100%) held in cash. Reserve requirement (≥10%) trivially satisfied.

### EV for the record

No deployed EV. For shadow-tracking: the rejected Blanche NO@89 at a 10% final probability would have carried ≈+1.1% EV before fees — below any deployable threshold.

### Cluster table

| Cluster | Legs considered | Deployed |
|---|---|---|
| blanche-ag-confirmation | KXBLANCHEJUDICIARY-SEP01, KXAGCONF-SEP01 | 0 (both rejected) |
| all others | 1 leg each | 0 |

### Conviction exposure

HIGH $0 · MEDIUM $0 · Cash $2,500.

### Risk profile

No market risk. The live portfolio's existing picks (notably KXBLANCHEJUDICIARY-27-26AUG01 YES, entered Jul 16 at 64¢ on the pre-postponement schedule) were _not_ re-hedged: adding NO on the SEP01 leg was evaluated and rejected on edge, not on hedging grounds.

### Execution notes

Nothing to execute. If the Blanche book drifts back above ~93¢ YES-implied-NO (i.e., YES asks >18–20¢) without new process news, the NO thesis would clear the slippage floor and merits a re-look — next scheduled run covers it.

## Data-quality notes for the next run

- `market_snapshots` is not in the query-API schema (schema fetched first, treated as source of truth). 14-day history was reconstructed from `signal_snapshots` where prior signals existed, plus the live book.
- The Kalshi public API now returns `*_dollars` / `*_fp` fields (e.g. `yes_bid_dollars`, `volume_24h_fp`) — the bare-cent field names return null. Parsers updated in this run.
- `signals` shows two other live strategies flip-flopping on KXBLANCHEJUDICIARY-SEP01 (YES Jul 29 → NO Jul 30) — worth a cross-strategy dedupe/conflict check in the bot.
- No precedent writeback: nothing in a target series both settled and got verified this run (the Blanche AUG01 leg settles Aug 1 — next run should write it up, including the postponement→withdrawal-threat sequence and the intraday 46→12 repricing of the SEP01 sister leg).

Keel v4 · Sources: Senate Judiciary Committee notices; NPR (Jul 30); Roll Call (Jul 29 & 2026 Senate calendar); Washington Post (Jul 29); PBS/AP (Jul 30); Kalshi public API (live books, rules); kalmari.app DB mirror (schema, precedents, signals). Precedent hints were verified against live rules text before use.