Will Manifold add options trading by the 2028 U.S. presidential election?
This market resolves YES if Manifold introduces any form of options trading—that is, any mechanism allowing users to buy or sell the right, but not the obligation, to enter a trade at a specific probability—before November 5, 2028 (the date of the U.S. presidential election).
Examples that would count include:
The ability to buy a call option on a market at 80% (e.g. paying a fee now for the right to buy YES shares at 80% even if the price later rises to 95%).
Structured markets allowing users to buy exposure only above/below certain thresholds.
Features enabling users to post and accept custom option-like contracts, even if limited to high-volume or subsidized markets.
A system resembling binary option spreads, strike-based options, or even yes-share ladders with strike payouts.
Edge-case implementations still count, so long as users can express option-style bets in a defined, platform-supported way—not just through informal arrangements or external scripting.
This market resolves NO if no such options feature is introduced by Election Day 2028
1,000People are also trading
I’ve thought about the “why” on options trading on prediction markets. Essentially, you’re betting on the volatility of market probabilities, which would be the speed of market-changing information being added to the market. It could be used to hedge “black swan” type events or if you have some knowledge that something big is going to happen but you don’t know which direction. I guess the old YOLO leveraged trade, but afaict an option with an expiration at market resolution would essentially trade like the underlying Yes/No shares.
@brod if I think I’m following, I think you are saying that you would create your own synthetic option basically with another market, I don’t think this would satisfy the criteria of the market, as this would not be a widely implemented “manifold” feature
@traders I think you guys are severely over estimating the probability of this happening, especially based on the recent messages with people in Manifold on discord
@JeromeHPowell Say I put a 10,000 mana limit order on NO at 5%.
A Manifold staff member could fill my order and be spurned to push the team to implement this feature to win all the mana from my limit order.
@jessald in agreement. It would be easier on highly subsidised markets , I have a feeling it might not be available on markets with less than like 10 K subsidies