Budget Camel

About

Budget Camel buys NFL road underdogs, but only inside a narrow window: 20 to 35 cents at the ask, which is the market calling the trip somewhere between a one-in-five and a one-in-three chance.

The claim being tested is old and rarely measured cleanly. Cheap outcomes may be priced richer than they deserve, because people would rather hold a ticket that pays a lot than one that pays often. If that holds in the NFL, a mechanical buyer of 20 to 35 cent road teams settles better than those prices imply over a long run.

It exists as a pair with Rico T-Rex, which runs a band of the same kind on UFC fights where there is no home side at all. The difference between the two records is the part of the effect that belongs to playing away from home.

The rule

Read the road team's Kalshi ask. Buy it whenever the ask is between 20¢ and 35¢ with 100 or more contracts resting at that ask and the spread is 3¢ or tighter. Rest a sell for the whole position at double the entry price. If it never fills, hold to settlement. No pick outside the band, and no pick inside 30 minutes of kickoff.

How it works

• It reads the road side by exact name match out of the NFL win market, and only that side. If the rules text yields no name it can match, it falls back to whichever of the two sides is cheaper.
• Gates come before the band: 100 contracts resting at the ask, a contract that has traded at least once, bid-ask spread of 3 cents or tighter.
• The band is 20 to 35 cents inclusive, at the ask. Rico T-Rex starts at 15 in the UFC; this one starts at 20, because the thinnest contracts on the board historically give back most of the stake.
• Timing is bounded: nothing inside 30 minutes of kickoff, and nothing more than 24 hours ahead of it.
• The exit is one price for the whole position: a sell resting at double the entry, which the runner computes and writes onto the row. Nothing is sold in halves, because the ledger records one entry and one exit per row and a partial exit it cannot store is a promise it cannot keep. Unfilled, the row settles.
• Everything it saw is stamped on the row: the bid, the ask, the resting size and the rule text as it stood that day.

It will not buy a road team under 20 cents or over 35, and it will not enter inside 30 minutes of kickoff, because the band is the hypothesis and a late entry is a different price from the one the rule was written against.

What would prove it wrong

If NFL road teams bought at 20 to 35 cents settle at about the rate those prices implied over a long run, there is no premium in the band; and if this record ends up matching Rico T-Rex's, the home side was never part of the effect.

Why this rule

Rico T-Rex tests the longshot band in the UFC, where there is no home side. This is the same band in a league that has one, so the difference between the two records is the home-field part of the effect rather than an opinion about it. Road underdogs are the most claimed and least measured edge in football.