🔮 6 Day One Surprises

The Biggest Surprises from Inauguration Day

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Despite brutally cold DC weather, Trump’s second term inauguration went off smoothly. As expected, Trump signed executive orders to end birthright citizenship, pardoned over 1,500 January 6 protestors, and instituted a hiring freeze on non-military Federal workers.

But on Polymarket, the world’s largest prediction market, a number of events still took forecasters by surprise. Here are some of the biggest upsets from yesterday:

One: Executive Orders: Blizzard or Flurry?

GOP senator John Barrasso of Wyoming recently predicted Trump would issue a “blizzard of executive orders.” Over 40 Orders on Trump’s first day led the betting odds going into the inauguration, but now it’s looking like a more modest 25-29 orders for the day. It may take a while to sort this one out as the official rules go by publication in the Federal Register, which takes a few days to update.

Two: Surprise Guests and No Shows.

NYC mayor Eric Adams and Joe Rogan made surprise appearances at the inauguration - both had sub 40% odds to attend just a day before. Michelle Obama was nowhere to be seen, marking the second high profile event she has missed since skipping Jimmy Carter’s funeral.

Three: Biden Pardon-palooza.

Joe Biden’s last official acts in office were issuing a number of pardons that caught the market by surprise. These included Anthony Fauci, General Milley, Adam Schiff, and a number of Biden family members, including his brother Jim Biden. All of these last-minute pardons were at well under 50% odds in recent days and some of them, for example the General Milley pardon, were so under-the-radar that they were not even listed as options on Polymarket.

Four: Vivek Out at DOGE.

On Monday we learned that it is possible for someone to be a member of the Trump administration for a negative amount of time. The reasons for his exit are still murky, but it seems like a combination of “personality conflicts” and Ramaswamy’s desire to run for governor of Ohio.

Five: Less $BTC, More $TRUMP.

The Trump family stunned the crypto world on Friday night by launching not one but two memecoins in the weekend before inauguration. Donald Trump’s officially-sanctioned memecoin hit a $70b valuation before the launch of a second coin, $MELANIA, just two days later spooked the market and caused both coins to plunge.

Crypto is reportedly a matter of “national priority” in the Trump second term, but the market seems increasingly worried that the much-anticipated Strategic Bitcoin Reserve will not be a near-term priority (although odds for it to happen some time this year are now trading at 65% and rising)

Six: Tariffs are Real?

After the election, many pundits insisted that Trump’s tariff talk was Art of the Deal on steroids - an opening gambit in renegotiating trade deals. Part of this was his recent announcement of an “External Revenue Service” to raise money from foreign trade partners, which is looking more likely by the day.

On day one, Trump announced that he would impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico on February 1. This cratered the odds in the first-week tariff markets and leaves open the question of whether the tariffs are a negotiating tactic or a done deal. Currently, the market thinks that Trump’s reverse NAFTA is likely, but with slightly better odds for Canada’s likely next PM – the Trump-friendly Pierre Poilievre – to save Canada from the punishing tariffs.

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