Looking at your portfolio, sorted by value:

• How many people will attend Manifest 2023?: All good investments. If you're worried that the market will take a while to resolve, you should be able to sell NO (101-200) for nearly the full amount you'd get upon the market resolving - my guess is this is why 401+ is at 3% instead of like 1%. YES (201-300) is a pretty safe investment right now, but the rate of return is low enough that it's not worth it unless you want to buy like 100 shares.

• Will Jimmy Carter be alive on October 1?: You could sell YES now, but you might lose out on a bit of mana as a result. I just sold my shares at 97% - not because I think he's gonna die, but because I want to liquidate that mana and I'm okay with making only 97% of the profit I'd otherwise have made. Hanging onto those shares isn't a bad idea, though!

• How many people will attend Manifest 2023? [MORE SPECIFIC]?: I'd advise buying YES on all three of 251-275, 226-250, and 276-300. Put more on the highest one, and less on the lower ones - for example, 25 on the 251-275 and 5 each on 226-250 and 276-300 right now results in a profit of 9 to 31 mana as long as one of those three is correct. You can do this on any multiple choice market with enough options - if you're absolutely sure that one of [A, B, C] is correct, then you can split up your investment such that you make a profit as long as one of them is correct.

• Will we raise a Series A?: My gut says "hold onto this, but probably don't buy more unless the market drops to around 35-40%." I feel like Manifest might bring more attention to the site, but it's uncertain enough that if I held YES in that market I'd likely sell it at around 60-65% and just walk away with the profits at that point.

• Will 'Oppenheimer' (2023) gross more than $1B worldwide before 2024?: Hold onto NO for now - if there's a cinematic re-release in 2023, bail ASAP and buy YES.

• At the end of 2023 will manifold users think Twitter has changed for the better?: Double down on NO - hell, maybe triple down. I think this market should be at like 10% or less. Manifold is not a fan of Elon Musk and that's what the question is basically asking about.

• Will I be able to use YouTube with ads blocked in December 2023?: Bail and buy YES ASAP. That market is going to keep going up; uBlock Origin is too powerful. Better to take 71% of a massive loss than 100% of it, and you can at least make some of that lost mana back if you buy YES.

• Will U.S. inflation fall to 2.8% or less by October 2023?: Hold NO. I think it's probably the right call, but I don't know if you should double down on it. Depends on what September's inflation figures look like.

• Will Barbie gross $1.5 billion worldwide by the end of 2023?: Hold NO.

• In 2028, will an AI be able to generate a full high-quality movie to a prompt?: Not a bad investment - I'm buying NO myself, but I don't think buying YES at around 45-50% is a bad idea.

Quick comments on a few other positions:

• Aella stock: Seems like YES is a good investment - maybe plan to sell if it reaches the 350-400 range just to liquidate and get some guaranteed profit.

• Bryan Johnson age of death: I think selling might be a good idea, if only because I think the chance of him going down some sort of weird alternative medicine rabbit hole and dying as a result is decently high.

• Cannabis in Thailand: Double down on YES, I think. (Tangent: Oh my god was I really typing this for so long that they introduced dashboards and I DIDN'T EVEN NOTICE??? Fuck)

• Manifold 10,600 monthly active users: You're kinda in a hole on this one...maybe try to sell if the price ever reaches 30% or above again, to minimize losses. Until then, it's probably best to just hold YES.

• Pixel 8 release date: I'd buy YES on October 1-8, but October 9-16 seems like a safe-ish bet as well. "Before October 1" and "After November 1" are both free mana on NO.

• Mana-chan cosplayer: Triple down on NO.

• Isaac King goes to Manifest: Free mana on NO.

I came to Manifold to test my predictive ability, but sadly >95% of my profits so far have come from frequently checking the "closing soon" markets and being first to bet once the resolution criteria have been met. If you're willing to do a few hours of grinding a week, you can get positive profits in 3 months easily. Well I guess you also need emotional control and some statistical reasoning skills so you don't end up "picking up pennies in front of steamrollers" and lose it all.

So, if you look at my record, you'll see that I was at more than -Ṁ500 profit on September 26th, and now am positive. So, what I did:

1) Look on Browse for closing soon markets where the outcome is already determined. (You've already been advised to do this, of course, but for the sake of completeness . . . )

2) Look on Browse for new Free Response markets, and on ones that have very few answers so far, bet YES on Other, since any answer added after your Other bet you get a position in for free. (Doesn't work with the new unlinked markets, so it's a bit harder to filter for 'em now.)

2a) Occasionally check back on the Free Response markets that you bet Other on, because as the options get added, the original options you didn't bet on will often become very cheap. You can occasionally pick those up cheaply and wind up in a position that literally any resolution of the market will return a profit.

3) Brand-new markets in general tend to be initially mispriced; getting in early can really help.

4) Keep your individual bets low and diversified.

5) Do not sit on mana. Mana in your balance is mana that cannot return a profit. If you're in a position where you're looking through your existing positions to see what you ought to liquidate so you can make bets, or waiting for the daily loan plus the chance to collect the daily quests to hit an opportunity, then you've got your mana working for you. (I've relaxed on this now that I'm out of the red, but look at my chart for all the time I spent between Ṁ0 and Ṁ200 balance.)

6) Be willing to sell off profitable positions to lock in profits, particularly when resolutions are a good way in the future. If you buy Ṁ10 of a market with a resolution that is a month in a future, and a week later your position is worth Ṁ15, go ahead and sell it. You made a 50% profit in a week, now go look for some other bets.

Is that all too general for me to get any bounty? Probably.

I've been there, deep in the red, but I'm almost out!

Here is my (serious) advice:

Look for markets with a low amount of traders. Talking like less than 10. These usually tend to be less controlled by avid manifold users, so you can just regularly spend some time every few days going back to the lesser known markets and updating your position of necessary. Theres less liquidity, but there are thousands and thousands of lowly-traded markets, and 5-50 mana profit on a few markets a day can get you out of the red very quickly.

I'm getting wrecked on holding NO on this one 😬

Not doing too good right now.

Mainly losing on:

• https://manifold.markets/BTE/will-i-have-40000-unique-traders-on

• https://manifold.markets/BTE/will-firstuserhere-demote-to-diamon-54b0a9cba3a5

join me in my quest for rambunctious gains in this dicey market /chrisjbillington/will-manifold-have-a-day-below-1200-9a15f1ff7c3a

I have almost 1,300 Mana locked into this spicy market which was probably not the best idea. Any suggestions on what I should do? Anyway to reduce my exposure gracefully?