On October 10th I published an article with the title “Polls Are Wrong: Trump Will Deliver Another Stunning Upset“. Here is what I said:
“I love data. I look at it and try to predict the future. You probably don’t know much about me, so let me introduce myself. I am Insider Monkey’s research director. I have a PhD in financial economics and I try to predict the direction of individual stocks and the entire market to make trade recommendations for our subscribers. I usually share 1-2 free trade ideas every year.
I shared this year’s first free trade idea on February 27th in an article titled “Recession Is Imminent: We Need A Travel Ban NOW!“. At the time of the publication of that article the U.S. COVID-19 death toll stood at zero and we had only 1 confirmed COVID-19 case of community transmission. It is an amazing article. I predicted that the S&P 500 Index will decline by 20-30% by the end of the year and told you to short the market (I told our subscribers to short the market a few days before that article was published).
The second time I shared a stock pick this year was in the middle of March when the total U.S. COVID-19 deaths was fewer than 200. In this article I predicted that the U.S. death toll will surpass 20,000 in less than 4 weeks and told our readers to buy hospital stocks, specifically Tenet Healthcare (THC). Those predictions were very accurate.
On March 25th, I told our subscribers to cover their short positions and go long the market. So, our market bottom call was also very accurate. Because of accurate market timing and stock recommendations our subscribers were able to return 112% since March 2017 vs. 54% gain for the S&P 500 Index ETF (SPY). I am really good at analyzing data and not a very humble person.
So, one of the most important questions we have to answer right now is the outcome of the presidential election. Who will win the presidency?
The best tool we have to determine the outcome of elections is polls. Each poll has its own bias and we have get rid of some of the bias in individual polls by combining the results of each individual poll in one giant poll. Fivethirtyeight is a website that does this for us. Its method isn’t fool proof though. We can get rid of some of the bias, but not all of it. Right before the 2016 presidential election, on November 7th, Fivethirtyeight estimated that Hillary Clinton had a 67% chance of winning the election. Yet, Donald Trump crushed Hillary. There are several reasons why this happened. I am not going to waste your time to discuss these. The most important factor was that voters didn’t reveal their true intentions when asked by pollsters. As a result, polls failed to predict the outcome of the 2016 elections.”
Then I went on to predict the election outcome for each state. On October 18th, I published a follow-up article with the title “Polls Are Biased: Trump Will Again Deliver A Stunning Upset (Update 1)” and updated the first article’s predictions. I didn’t change any of my initial predictions. Finally, I published my third article and second update on October 25th. The title of my article was “Polls Are Tightening: Trump Will Deliver Stunning Upset (Update 2)“. Please go ahead and check my predictions for the winners of each state in that article. Right now (at 3 am on November 4th), we know the winners in 42 states. My predictions are 100% accurate. I predicted that Trump will win all delegates in Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Nebraska, and Texas.
I predicted a 7.2 point Trump victory in Ohio even though Fivethirtyeight was predicting a marginal Biden victory at one point. “Pollsters think Ohio is a battleground state. We disagree,” I wrote. Right now Trump is leading by 8 points.
I also predicted that Trump will win in Georgia (Trump leading), North Carolina (Trump leading), and Arizona (Biden leading). I may be wrong with my Arizona call. Even though Fivethirtyeight was predicting a 7.7 point Biden victory in Michigan, I predicted a close race and a 2 point Biden victory in Michigan. I said “This is another battleground state. Biden has the edge now, but Trump might be able to close the gap over the next 9 days. He already closed the gap by 0.6 points over the last couple of week”.
I also predicted Biden victories in Nevada and Wisconsin. At the time Fivethirtyeight was predicting a 6.2 point Biden victory in Wisconsin. “Trump loses by 0.4 points (This is a battleground state. Right now Trump is slightly behind but he has 9 days to gain a small edge over Biden)” I wrote about Wisconsin. I want to make it clear that I wasn’t certain about the election results in Arizona and Wisconsin. On October 18th I said the following: “It is still possible that Trump can win Wisconsin and lose Arizona, so, for now we give Wisconsin to Biden and Arizona to Trump.”
Right now we don’t know who will win in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. We also don’t know who will win this election. I predicted this as well. Fivethirtyeight was predicting that Biden will win Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona. Nate Silver thought Biden had an 87% chance of winning the presidency. “Overall, I don’t believe Joe Biden has an 87% chance of winning the election right now. The outcome of this election is still extremely uncertain,” I concluded my article.
I nailed it. I told you that I am not a humble person in my articles. This isn’t a victory lap. I am publishing this article because I want you to subscribe to my investment newsletter. I analyze data and make predictions about individual stocks. Our stock recommendations returned 113.1% between March 2017 and October 2020, whereas the S&P 500 Index ETF (SPY) returned 47.4% during the same period. Our subscribers were able to beat the market by nearly 66 percentage points in 3.5 years. I saw the coronavirus pandemic, economic recession, and a 30% decline in the stock market coming this year. I am not an infectious disease experts. I predicted the state by state election outcomes with extreme accuracy. I am not a political scientist or a pollster with millions to spend. I am an expert data analyst. Other people spend millions to gather data and interpret it. I study their data and analysis, and then make better predictions by improving the methodology. We track hedge funds here at Insider Monkey. Hedge funds collectively spend billions and invest in thousands of stocks. We use hedge funds’ holdings data and identify the best stock picks of hedge funds. If you want to follow me or my articles, please enter your email below to subscribe to our free daily enewsletter:
