Manifold Betting Calculator
A profit calculator for Manifold Markets. If you have a limited balance and are unsure of which market to invest in given the differing resolution time frames, input their details into this calculator and pick the one with the highest rate of return. It takes into account the 4% daily loans, and assumes that any loans from a market are reinvested into that market every day until it resolves.
Manifold currently averages a rate of return of around 4% a month, which is 60% a year. Any market you find that gives you less than 4% in monthly-equivalent is not worth betting in.
People on Manifold frequently offer loans to each other. If you can get a loan at X% interest for a month, and there exists a market that the calculator says you can make more than X% in monthly equivalent compounding interest, it is profitable for you to take out that loan for as many months in a row as is needed until the market resolves. Or if you're the one offering the loan, it would be better to simply keep the mana and bet in the market yourself.
Limitations: This calculator assumes infinite liquidity in the market. This is a reasonable assumption as long as you're betting only small amounts of mana relative to the total market liquidity, but if the amount you're going to be betting is enough to noticeably move the market probability, you'll need to use it multiple times for each new probability. This calculator also doesn't take into account the Kelly criterion; it only tells you what you stand to gain on expectation in a single market. For Kelly bets, see Manifolio. Nor does it take into account that fact that your loans will decrease if the market probability moves against you, so your actual rate of return will be a little lower than what's indicated here. Lastly, this calculator does not account for the slowdown of the Earth's rotation and the increasing distance of the moon, which will render the monthly and yearly interest calculations inaccurate on time scales greater than about 25 million years. Apologies.
