# LEDGER RECAP — Friday, March 27, 2026 ### "Grading the Portfolio. Refining the Algorithm." --- **HOST (Alex Mercer):** Welcome back to the Ledger Recap. I'm Alex Mercer, and across from me is Marcus Webb. Marcus, we've got a big tape to review today — 29 positions, a mixed bag of wins, losses, and a few that are gonna make us uncomfortable. **ANALYST (Marcus Webb):** The good kind of uncomfortable. The kind where you learn something. Alex Mercer: Exactly. Quick housekeeping for anyone new to the desk — we track in prediction market units. If we buy a contract at 60 cents, we're risking 0.60 units to win 0.40. Pure risk-based accounting. No point spreads, no juice. Just implied probability and price. Now — the Scorecard. --- ## 📊 THE SCORECARD Alex Mercer: Session record: 17 wins, 12 losses, zero pushes. 29 positions. And the PnL? Plus 3.3 units on the session. Overall, we're sitting at 283 and 249 on the year, plus 5.0 units total. Marcus Webb: And I'm gonna say it before you do — 17 and 12 is a 58% win rate, and we made 3.3 units. That's... fine. But fine isn't the goal. Alex Mercer: Call it out. Marcus Webb: We are consistently buying contracts at 45 to 55 cents. Near-coinflip prices. Which means even when we're right, the upside is capped. We're winning the thesis battle and leaving alpha on the table. We'll get into specifics. --- ## 🎬 THE FILM ROOM Alex Mercer: Let's go to the film. First up — Detroit Pistons versus the Lakers. We had two positions here, and both hit. Marcus Webb: This was a clean read. We bought Daniss Jenkins shares at 52 cents — his points over 13.5. And we bought the Pistons moneyline at 46 cents. Alex Mercer: Jenkins goes for 30. Career high. Marcus Webb: Right. But here's the *why*, and this is the part that matters for the playbook. Cade Cunningham is out — collapsed lung. Marcus Sasser is out — hip. Jenkins is the only healthy true point guard on that roster. When your starting point guard is also your only point guard, the usage doesn't just increase. The *entire offensive infrastructure* routes through him. Every pick-and-roll, every transition push, every late-clock creation — it's all Jenkins. The market priced him at 52 cents like he was a role player. He was the engine. Alex Mercer: And the moneyline at 46 cents — the market had the Pistons as slight underdogs against LA. Marcus Webb: Which, given the injury context on Detroit's side, makes sense on the surface. But the Lakers were also playing without key contributors. And Jenkins' usage spike essentially gave Detroit a de facto All-Star-level performance from an unexpected source. Pistons win 113-110. Both contracts settle at a dollar. Alex Mercer: Now — Aggressive Alpha Review. Were we too conservative? Marcus Webb: Yes. If we had conviction on Jenkins — and we did, that's why we bought the contract — we should have sized up. We risked 0.52 units to win 0.48. That's a near-even money position. Given the injury intelligence, this was closer to a 70-cent thesis dressed up in a 52-cent price. We should've gone heavier. Alex Mercer: Missed alpha — call it 0.3 to 0.4 additional units if we'd sized appropriately. Noted. Next up — Nikola Jokić, Nuggets versus Suns. Marcus Webb: This one's beautiful and painful at the same time. Alex Mercer: Walk me through it. Marcus Webb: We had three positions in this game. Jokić rebounds over 12.5 at 52 cents — WIN, he finishes with 17. Aaron Gordon rebounds over 5.5 at 52 cents — WIN, he finishes with 6. And Jamal Murray points over 23.5 at 52 cents — LOSS. Murray finishes with 21. Alex Mercer: So we went 2-for-3 in Denver-Phoenix. What happened with Murray? Marcus Webb: Here's the chain. Jokić posts a 23-17-17 triple-double — that's not a typo, seventeen assists. When Jokić is operating at that level of playmaking dominance, the ball is moving *through* him constantly. Murray's role shifts from primary creator to off-ball cutter and catch-and-shoot option. He's not initiating as much. And in a game that close — they win 125-123 on a Jokić game-winner — Murray is being preserved. He's not forcing volume in a tight game when Jokić is the closer. Alex Mercer: So Jokić's historic playmaking actually suppressed Murray's scoring ceiling. Marcus Webb: Exactly. We were pricing Murray like Jokić was going to have an average night. He did not. That's a thesis error, not a bad beat. We should have recognized that when Jokić goes full maestro mode, Murray's point total is the most correlated casualty. Alex Mercer: Now — the Jokić rebounds win. Aggressive Alpha Review? Marcus Webb: We bought at 52 cents — over 12.5 rebounds. He gets 17. The market had him at essentially a coinflip. Given that Phoenix plays at one of the fastest paces in the league, and Jokić is the MVP frontrunner averaging well over 12 boards — we should have looked at a higher line. Over 14.5, maybe 15.5, at a lower price. We took the easy money. Alex Mercer: Missed alpha on the Jokić rebound position — probably another 0.2 to 0.3 units if we'd gone to an aggressive alt line. --- Alex Mercer: Now let's talk about one that stings. Ryan Rollins — we had him twice this week, and the results were completely opposite. Marcus Webb: This is the one that requires intellectual honesty. Against the Clippers, we bought Rollins shares — points over 17.5 at 47 cents. He scores 13. LOSS. Against Portland, we bought him over 18.5 — and he scores 36. WIN. Alex Mercer: Same player. Same week. Same role. Completely different outcomes. Marcus Webb: Here's the systemic read. Against the Clippers, Milwaukee was getting blown out — final score 129-96. When a game goes sideways by 30 points, the primary usage player on the losing team gets pulled early. Rollins was in a garbage-time situation in the fourth quarter. His shot attempts dried up because the game was already decided. He shot 6-of-16 — the volume was there early, but the game script killed the fourth quarter. Alex Mercer: And against Portland? Marcus Webb: Complete reversal. Giannis is still out with the knee hyperextension. Portland is a lottery team. The game is competitive enough that Rollins is playing full minutes, full usage, full shot volume. He gets 36 points. The 47-cent price on the Clippers game was actually fair — it was a coin flip. The 47-cent price on the Portland game? That was a gift. Alex Mercer: So the lesson is game script dependency. Rollins' ceiling is real, but it requires a competitive game environment to unlock. Marcus Webb: Add it to the playbook. When a usage-spike player is on a heavy underdog — check the implied probability of a blowout. If the opponent is a 70-cent favorite, the primary option on the losing team is a game-script liability. --- Alex Mercer: Now the one that's gonna hurt. Kings versus Hornets. We had three positions in this game, and it was a disaster. Marcus Webb: Let's get into it. We bought the Over 226.5 at 3 cents — that's a near-certain position, basically a hedge. We bought Sacramento plus 16.5 at 34 cents. Final score: Charlotte 134, Sacramento 90. The Kings lost by 44. Alex Mercer: Forty-four points. Marcus Webb: The Kings scored 90 points. The Over on 226.5 — at 3 cents, we barely lost anything there, minus 0.04 units. But the plus 16.5 at 34 cents — LOSS. And here's what makes it a systemic failure on our part, not just bad luck. Sacramento was already a depleted roster. When a team is playing out the string in late March with nothing to play for, and they're facing a Charlotte team that's been on a run, the spread can evaporate fast. We were buying implied probability on a team with no structural incentive to compete hard. Alex Mercer: That's the root cause. It's not that the Kings are bad — it's that they had no competitive stakes in that game. Marcus Webb: Motivation is a market variable. We underweighted it. --- Alex Mercer: Let's do a quick hit on the college positions before we get to Strategic Evolution. Illinois over Houston — we had Houston minus 3.5 and minus 2.5. Both losses. Marcus Webb: Illinois wins 65-55. Houston shoots 34% from the field. And the Illini go on a 17-0 run in the second half. Here's the chain: Houston was playing what amounted to a home game in terms of crowd proximity. When that crowd goes silent — and a 17-0 run will silence any crowd — Houston's offense, which is heavily reliant on guard penetration and rhythm shooting, completely collapsed. They couldn't buy a bucket. Illinois held them to a season low. Both our Houston contracts settle at zero. Alex Mercer: Bad thesis or bad beat? Marcus Webb: Bad thesis. We trusted Houston's seed and their regular season efficiency without accounting for Illinois's elite defensive identity. The Illini were built to do exactly this. We bought noise. --- ## 🧠 STRATEGIC EVOLUTION Alex Mercer: Alright, Marcus — what did we learn for the Playbook this week? What's the new rule? Marcus Webb: Three things. First — **injury-driven usage spikes are systematically underpriced**. Jenkins at 52 cents, Rollins at 47 cents in the Portland game — the market is slow to reprice when a secondary player suddenly becomes the primary option. We need to be faster, and we need to size up when the injury intelligence is clean. Alex Mercer: Second? Marcus Webb: **Jokić in maestro mode suppresses Murray**. This is a specific correlation we need to model. When Jokić's assist total is trending toward double digits, Murray's scoring upside compresses. Don't buy Murray's points over in a game where Jokić is the clear playmaking engine. Alex Mercer: And third — this is the big one. Marcus Webb: **Conviction-to-aggression calibration.** We went 17 and 12 this session and made 3.3 units. If we'd sized up on our highest-conviction positions — Jenkins, Jokić rebounds, the Pistons moneyline — we're looking at 5 to 6 units instead of 3.3. The thesis work is good. The position sizing is too conservative. When the edge is clear, we need to express it clearly. Buying a 70-cent thesis at 52 cents and risking one unit is not the same as buying it and risking two. Alex Mercer: And that's the gap between being right and being profitable. Marcus Webb: Right. "Being right" is table stakes. Being *sized correctly when right* — that's the edge. --- ## 🎙️ OUTRO Alex Mercer: Good session. Not a great session. The algorithm is sharper for it. Before we go, remember — everything we discuss here is analysis of prediction market contracts on platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi. We are grading our portfolio and refining our process. Marcus Webb: Iron sharpens iron. Alex Mercer: Every time. Opinions expressed are for informational purposes only. Bet responsibly. --- **