Prediction-market prices move for three reasons: liquidity and order flow, fresh news, and a revised model fair value. The analytical task is not noticing that a price moved; it is diagnosing which of the three did it, because only one of them is a durable signal.
Flow and news dominate the minute-to-minute tape. A model revaluation is rarer and slower, but it is the move worth trading around. Separating the three starts with the current national-title board, where the spread between fair value and best price tells most of the story.
How do you tell a liquidity move from a news move?
A liquidity move is mechanical. A large order sweeps the book, the price gaps, and it drifts back once the flow is absorbed. There is no headline attached and the move is often isolated to a single venue while the others sit still.
A news move is informational. A result, an injury update, or a scheduling shift changes the underlying probability, so the price holds rather than reverting. The tell is correlation: a genuine news move shows up on Kalshi and Polymarket at roughly the same time, because both are repricing the same fact.
When a price jumps on one exchange and the other does not follow, that is a liquidity event or a mispricing, not news. The cheapest venue to trade a given team can shift purely on which book just got hit.
What the price-over-fair gap reveals
The distance between a contract's best price and the model's fair value is a liquidity gauge. At the top of the board the gap is thin: Georgia's fair value is 21.9% and its best price is 23c on Kalshi, a one-point premium that reflects a deep, heavily arbitraged market where flow gets absorbed quickly.
The gap widens as liquidity thins. Notre Dame sits at 13.7% fair with a 14c best price on Polymarket, and Miami at 9.6% fair against 10c on Kalshi, both still tight. The longshot tier is where structure shows: Ole Miss trades 5c against a 3.3% fair value, and BYU 2c against 1.5%.
That pattern is the vig and thin-book effect, not a view on the teams. Where fewer contracts change hands, the clearing price carries more overhead above fair, which is why longshot prices routinely run hot relative to the model.
National-title fair value: where the board sits
The model's fair value is the reference line every price move is measured against. The top tier is led by Georgia, with Notre Dame and a cluster of SEC and ACC contenders behind it.
Reading the board top to bottom shows how quickly probability thins out after the leaders, which is exactly why small-cent moves matter more in the longshot tier than at the top.
When does the model's view actually move price?
The model does not move the market directly. Its fair value is an estimate; the traded price only converges toward it when disciplined flow pushes contracts away from where they currently clear and toward the model's number. Until that flow arrives, a gap can persist for weeks.
That is the practical read on the best-price board below. Where a contract clears above fair, the model is flagging a potential fade; where it clears at or below fair, the model sees the price as reasonable. Georgia at 23c on Kalshi, LSU at 10c on Polymarket, and Ole Miss at 5c on Kalshi all illustrate how the cheapest venue and the fair-value premium vary line by line.
Traders comparing venues can note the promo landscape (Kalshi FADE, Polymarket TGSWC) without letting it drive the read; venue choice affects cost, not fair value. Prices and the model can both be wrong, and none of this is financial advice.
