The stock market isn't perfect and not everyone participates in it, and the data is extraordinarily clear that essentially nobody is capable of extracting a durable edge. Of the people who do beat the market in a given year, those who beat the market the next year appear to follow the exact same distribution as the market as a whole.
Prediction markets are worse, both on the surface and by the actual statistics. The house takes an enormous cut, and then you have the issue of trading against insiders. Only an absolute rube would put money into a market rife with insiders, when they don't have comparable information. And the statistics bear this out. Something like 80% of all profits are captured by the top 1% of profitable users, which are only 30% of the total user base.
Anyone who thinks they will consistently make sound bets in these platforms without actually having private knowledge is a complete fool.
