The Hedge Fund that Polls Regular People Where Markets Are Going ?

About this episode

The episode discusses how Oraclum Capital uses crowd predictions to inform market strategies.

In this episode, Jeff Malec sits down with Vuk Vukovic and Scott Alford of Oraclum Capital (ORCA) to explore how an academic project on elections turned into a $70M hedge fund powered by crowd predictions. Vuk explains how he and his co-founders, coming from economics, physics, and computer science backgrounds, built a survey-based system that originally nailed events like Brexit and the 2016 and 2020 U.S. elections, then adapted the same framework to financial markets. Scott breaks down how ORCA combines wisdom of crowds, network analysis, and machine learning to identify the best retail predictors each week and turn their aggregated views into directional options trades on the S&P and Nasdaq. They discuss incentives for participants, how they filter noise, why independence and diverse networks matter more than “experts,” the limits of traditional polling, and the rise, and risks, of retail trading and prediction markets. The conversation also touches on political polarization, elite networks, and what it really takes to build a differentiated strategy in today’s markets. SEND IT! Chapters: 00:00-01:34= Intro 01:35-12:38= Origins of ORCA: From Broken Polls to a Crowd-Powered…

People in this episode

Host: Jeff Malec

Guests: Vuk Vukovic, Scott Alford

Topics covered

• crowd predictions
• hedge funds
• financial markets
• polling
• retail trading
• machine learning
• network analysis

Keywords

• hedge fund
• crowd predictions
• financial markets
• polling
• machine learning
• retail trading
• network analysis
• options trades
• predictors
• political polarization

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Oraclum Capital, ORCA

Places: S&P, Nasdaq

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