How will this market treat a merger between TSLA and SpaceX if completed within the market window where SpaceX (or simply X, or some other moniker) is the final holding company / top level entity?

https://www.reuters.com/technology/nvidia-dethrones-tesla-wall-streets-most-traded-stock-2024-02-20/

Nvidia also dethroned Google as the 3rd most valuable company in America last week.

Similar market for end of 2030

Nvidia undervalued

The option “A company that did not exist at the posting of this question” seems to me problematic, since someone will surely add any number of new companies as they are revealed as potentially big, and people would no doubt bet on them, resulting in this option overlapping with those.

@MikhaFischler I think you should state a clear policy on resolution of such a case well before it comes up.

@MikhaFischler I see you (and others) bidding this option to ~7% so could you, as the market creator as well as creator and proponent of this option, please clarify the potential conflicts with the “Other” option given the high likelihood that new candidates will get added out of this “Other” pool?

A couple of illustrative cases added to the description in which this option resolves YES or NO would be of great help. For example:

• Any new option created for a company that did not exists as of Oct 2023 will be disqualified, and will resolve NO in all situations.

• If Musk, Altman (or anyone else) founds a new company after Oct 2023, and that company is the most valuable in 2030, then this option (“company did not exist”) resolves YES. If the company gets added as an option then that will resolve NO to prevent conflicts. Alternatively, both “did not exist” and “NewCo” options will resolve to 50% (though IMO that would greatly confuse traders).

• If Microsoft acquires OpenAI, later spins it off as “Bingo”, and also Google spins off their DeepMind unit, and these two later merge, calling it “BingDeep” then this qualifies as a new company, and if it’s the largest then “did not exist” would resolve YES, and Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, or even “BingDeep” (if it were created) all would resolve NO. Alternatively, since all those predecessor companies already existed as of Oct 2023, then the newly created option “BingDeep” would count (but not those predecessors), or if it wasn’t created would resolve “Other” as YES, and “did not exist” would resolve NO.

As you can see, the edge cases can get very confusing, but the “spirit of the question” can be pinned down easily with something like “any new company resolves NO no matter what (including mergers where a single predecessor acquirer isn’t obvious), that’s what the “did not exists” option is for, so go bet on that.”

The spirit of the question is that a completely new company counts as “a company that did not exist at the posting of this question”. If there are mergers between existing companies, the new entity will be added and branched off of “other”. All companies that were founded after oct 2023 will resolve NO.

@MikhaFischler pretty clear, thanks!

Looking at the OpenAI drama, seems much more likely that a new AGI startup will emerge.

What is an example of these “other” companies that so many bet on? It must be an existing company today, so any candidate? Even if the bet covers many potential companies, I can’t come up with even one that isn’t one of the others already mentioned. 🤔

@deagol came up with LLY… now this seems to have messed up my bets somehow. Can anyone explain what happens to one’s position in “other” when an option is added? Thanks.

@deagol ok seems my NO position in “Others” converted into as many YES shares in all the options… I guess makes sense, now I just gotta sell all that garbage.

@deagol this is such a mess… why?

Microsoft has increased the double of his cap in the past five years and has always dominated the market. The next gen idea for gaming in TVs with no need of console is going to revolutionize the market and make them grow even more.

How will this question resolve if companies split up, merge or change names?

@Lion if there is a name change we will proceed as if it did not happen. Ex: if meta changed their name back to Facebook, and also became the largest company, anyone who betted meta would win. Mergers will count as a completely new company, and can be added under “other” unless a name of one of the previous companies is maintained, or it is clear the spirit of the company belongs to a specific company from the past.