Absolutely possible but if you were the presidents son I do think you'd be more likely to slowly buy in over 1+ weeks. If you were media related you'd want to do a giant bet before anybody else as you know lots of other people know and it's only a matter of time when someone else exploits it, and you only know slightly ahead of time.
When you have insider information it's typically most profitable or at the very least less risky to exploit it at the earliest moment, but if you know you have a long head start you can do it slowly to keep from bidding up the price. In either case a giant bet only hour before tells me it's someone who only found out about the operation shortly before it happened.
------- re: below due to throttling ----------
(1) Is an excellent point but they bought "will happen in the month of January" for something that occurred at the beginning of January, so basically the worst case scenario for exploiting bet expiry.
(2) Makes sense on face but I had read elsewhere there was a 2 week window. So at no point would it go outside the January window of the bet, there was no point in waiting once January 1st hit.
In this case a rational insider with a priori knowledge far ahead of time would have either placed a large bet first thing January 1st or started to ease in first thing on January 1st, as waiting would convey ~no advantage and only present risk other insiders would bite the apple first.
1. The odds are better the closer it gets to the bet's expiry. "Maduro will be ousted sometime in the next few weeks" has a relatively high probability, so a low payout. "Maduro will be ousted in the next few hours" is a jackpot.
2. Operations like these aren't set in stone weeks in advance. There may be general planning, but the exact hour is only decided at the last moment.
When you have insider information it's typically most profitable or at the very least less risky to exploit it at the earliest moment, but if you know you have a long head start you can do it slowly to keep from bidding up the price. In either case a giant bet only hour before tells me it's someone who only found out about the operation shortly before it happened.
------- re: below due to throttling ----------
(1) Is an excellent point but they bought "will happen in the month of January" for something that occurred at the beginning of January, so basically the worst case scenario for exploiting bet expiry.
(2) Makes sense on face but I had read elsewhere there was a 2 week window. So at no point would it go outside the January window of the bet, there was no point in waiting once January 1st hit.
In this case a rational insider with a priori knowledge far ahead of time would have either placed a large bet first thing January 1st or started to ease in first thing on January 1st, as waiting would convey ~no advantage and only present risk other insiders would bite the apple first.