Markets and prices

A price on Hedge is a probability wearing a dollar sign. This page explains the data model behind the market pages and where the numbers come from.

#Events, markets, and outcomes

The data has three levels, and the interface mirrors them:

Level	Meaning	Example
Event	A subject that groups related questions	A given election
Market	One binary question that resolves Yes or No	Will candidate X win?
Outcome	A tradeable side of that question	`Yes` or `No`

An event with a single market renders as one card. An event with many markets renders as a list of candidates, each with its own pair of prices. Every outcome has a token id, and that id is what identifies the thing you actually buy and sell.

#What a price means

Prices run between $0.00 and $1.00 and are displayed in cents. A share pays $1.00 if its outcome happens, so the price is the market’s estimate of the probability. The two sides of a market are complementary: if Yes trades at 60¢, No is priced around 40¢.

Buying $10 of a 40¢ outcome therefore gets you roughly 25 shares, which pay $25 if the outcome happens and nothing if it does not.

#The order book

Markets are not priced by a formula. There is a real order book with two sides, and the single “price” on a card is a summary of it:

Bids are what buyers are offering. Selling into the book fills against these.
Asks are what sellers are asking. Buying fills against these.
The spread is the gap between the best bid and the best ask, and the midpoint between them is the quoted price.

#Depth and slippage

Thin markets have little size resting at each price, so even a modest order moves through several levels. This is normal and is not a fee. It is the reason the shares estimate can change between typing an amount and confirming it, and the reason an unusually large order in a quiet market may not fill at all.

#Where the data comes from

Market data comes from the venue, fetched through the app’s own server routes rather than directly from the browser. That keeps upstream hosts and any keys off the client and lets responses be cached briefly.

Prices you see are therefore a moment old rather than a live stream, and the order book is re-read when it matters, notably when sizing an order, so the estimate reflects real depth rather than a cached top of book.

#Market states

Not every market can be traded. The app checks whether a market is live before enabling the buy panel, and a market that is closed, resolved, or missing a valid price renders as read-only. If the venue’s order book is down for maintenance the app reports that explicitly instead of letting an order fail in a confusing way.