Disclaimer: In the interest of not breaking any laws, I feel I should disclose that I probably have positions or intend to take positions in just about all the markets I will discuss herein.  You should always do your own research prior to making any investment decision. You should consider my advice and knowledge I share to be fundamentally biased in its presentation and selection by my own monetary incentives.  While I do not knowingly lie in this I certainly do knowingly omit information that I think gives me an edge.

______

SCOTUS week!  

Will Kavanaugh get the final rose?  Will Kethledge complete his dark horse ascendancy?  Will Barrett pull a miracle comeback? Will Mike Lee’s pathetic attempts get him anywhere?  Will Trump change his mind at the last minute as he has for countless other big decisions?

After bouncing around considerably for the first week, the market has decided based on reports today that it’s either going to be Kavanaugh or Kethledge (Barrett, the right-wing money pick, has endured a crushing setback in value, going from an always-somewhat-inexplicable high near 40c to 15c before now rebounding to the mid 20s).

I have no special insight for you here – McGahn and WH staff seem to be pushing Kav pretty hard.  Trump is leery of the Bush connection and was somewhat impressed by Keth, but we haven’t had much solid reporting on what he actually thinks.  (We have gotten reporting on what “sources close to the president” say he thinks, and most of these seem to be McGahn pumping Kav).

Pay close attention to twitter – Bob Costa, Jennifer Jacobs, and John Roberts seem to be clued into this one reasonably closely.  I expect the final news to break/leak by Sunday at the latest.

One more thing to watch – will Trump mention any candidate by name at the North Dakota rally tonight?  Sometimes he likes to float names to see how the crowd reacts…

FRIDAY MID-DAY UPDATE: No rally mention, and now Dawsey is reporting that Trump hasn’t quite committed on Kavanaugh, and continues to raise Barrett’s and Hardiman’s names in private.  This one will break soon fam, enjoy the ride this weekend.

The SCOTUS markets to come…

Aside from the main event, do be sure to check out some of the ancillary markets that will surely crop up.  We will probably get new markets for key senator’s votes as well as for how many votes the nominee gets in total.  These are insanely fun and not to be missed!

The Tweet Streets

(Unsure how to play tweet markets?  Check out my two-part guide here and here.  Links will be updated when new markets are made for PT and VPT.)

RDT – Where is the energy, Mr. President?  After a blistering June pace, he seems to have run out of steam.  SCOTUS decision occupying his mind? Not enough witch hunt news? With the NATO summit / UK / Putin summit coming up I have a hunch this might be a really boring B1 market unless he dig deep and find his inner shitposter one more time for us this weekend.

FRIDAY MID-DAY UPDATE: He continues not to rant, but has maintained a reasonable enough pace with randoms and what look like scavino pre-writes that the market will be interesting.

PT, WHT – What’s on the agenda?  I expect a big SCOTUS push once the nominee is named, plus some tweets accompanying the President’s travels abroad.  WHT has a non-negligible chance of overrunning the board into B7, but I’m hopeful that won’t happen until later in the week.  WHT might be the best bet for tweet market swings, in fact. As far as PT, we’ll have to see what the bracket fairies bring us on Friday, but my guess is another lightly traded week.

One X-factor – will Bill Shine make an impact on these markets?  Will messaging strategy change? Something to keep an eye on.

FRIDAY MID-DAY UPDATE: Is the PT-WHT link breaking down?  We’ve seen some conspicuous failures to retweet WHT on PT Thursday and Friday.  Will be interesting to see how that holds up heading into SCOTUS/Euro travels week.

VPT – After a dead B1 week, can next week rebound?  Will the bracket fairies screw us on Friday? From what I can see from Pence’s events next week should have a strong uptick in energy compared to this pathetic showing.

FRIDAY MID-DAY UPDATE: What a cuckening this morning.  At least he has some energy still, but let’s see if he can maintain that for his events next week.

Polling World

(Unsure about how to play polling markets?  Check out my two-part guide here and here).

It’s a new month, we’re past the holiday, and we’ve got a big event in the SCOTUS pick to poll around.  Hopefully we get some polls (NBC/WSJ? Fox?) next week to coincide with it.

538 TA – My guess (and it really is a guess) is that we don’t move that much from where we are.  Reuters has, as usual, the biggest chance to make a difference here. So pay attention to that Friday and then as usual the game is determining how the daily YGs, Ras, and Gal will tip the scales in the end.

RCP TA – Lord who knows this far out.  For this week’s market, we’re pretty much down to Ras and drops, so beware.

538 Ballot – Generic ballot polls have been strange lately.  Some pollsters are showing Ds breaking away a bit, others are showing Rs gaining ground.  The net effect has been that the average delta between them doesn’t move that much. I’ve got my fingers crossed that we get some solid national polls early next week that come in time to possibly flip this market.  But, like every week, it’ll probably just come down to Reut, Ras, YG, and MC all canceling each other out.

Ras – Fantastic market this week!  After two days off it’ll be interesting to see what number Trump spikes tomorrow.  Has the immigration politics-of-the-moment faded? Is it time for the Ras fairy to cook up a few more 50+ dailies?  Or will their respondents keep reporting that the President is a piece of shit? This one could go anywhere.
Markets to watch:

Strzok testify is one to watch this week.  He’s been subpoenaed to testify next Tuesday July 10 publicly.  So if that happens – it goes YES! Will he show though? While he’s stated in the past that he wants to testify publicly, his lawyer has also made protestations recently that the transcript from his private deposition wasn’t publicly released and has threatened to ignore the subpoena.  Is this gamesmanship? A very interesting spot given the pricing, and one that is likely to break soon.

Fuckin’ Scott Pruitt lol.  Will he finally get canned?  Maggie is hearing things, but she sounds skeptical.  And he did show up to the WH picnic no fucks given.  I don’t think he gets fired before the SCOTUS nom, and I don’t think he gets fired in the immediate aftermath, so idk.  Knife him during August? Wheeler can hold down the fort past the midterms if senate Rs are squeamish about a confirmation fight beforehand, so I don’t think that’s a big deal.

NOTE AFTER THE FACT: welp I was wrong about the timing!  HE GONE FAM.  The latest NYTimes story did him in (only 20 minutes from publication to resignation!).

The farm bill.  Have done negligible research on this but I suppose there’s always a chance that the conference negotiations go reasonably expeditiously and produce results before the August recess.  Whether that’s in time for both Houses to vote and Trump to sign by July 31 I don’t know.

One final note, it’ll be interesting to see what the first tariffs of the US-China trade war do on Friday to global markets (and Trump’s psyche in response).