And the hits keep on coming… Yesterday afternoon it was announced that President Biden had tested positive for COVID (for the 3rd time) and cancelled a campaign event in order to return to Delaware and self-isolate.

Looking at the PredictIt contract, Biden had been losing a little ground during the day yesterday, drifting back down to a trading range just north of $0.50. Then the COVID news comes out, and he lost ground in heavy trading, settling in overnight just south of $0.40.

But now in the last 2 hours, on heavy trading the Biden contract is collapsing further. As I write this Biden is down to $0.22, which I think is a new low; Harris is up to $0.61.

I’m not entirely sure what news is driving the most recent price movements, though? Yesterday, prior to the COVID news, Rep. Schiff (also the Democratic nominee for the open Senate seat in California) became the most prominent legislator to publicly join the “dump Biden” camp. I’m not aware of any specific similar announcements so far today. But with the RNC coming to an end tonight, it would be an interesting time to try and steal some of Trump’s thunder by having Biden change his stance on remaining in the race.

Vance gave his acceptance speech last night, which seems to have been pretty well received. I watched several seconds of it, catching the following phrase: “We need a leader who’s not in the pocket of big business, but answers to the working man, union and nonunion alike. A leader who won’t sell out to multinational corporations…” Pretty strange stuff to hear at a Republican convention.

A strange moment from yesterday’s RNC: One of the day’s convention speakers had woken up that very morning inside federal prison. That would be Peter Navarro, a former top economic advisor to Trump who just yesterday completed his four-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress, specifically in refusing to comply with a subpoena from the Jan 6th Committee.