Consensus

Consensus counts the distinct whales already on the same market and the same outcome at or before a given bet. Where conviction measures how strong one specialist’s move is, consensus measures how many independent specialists agree — the difference between one sharp opinion and several arriving at the same place separately.

Point-in-time, no lookahead

Consensus is strictly point-in-time. A consensus figure only ever counts whales who were already in the market at or before the moment being scored — there is no peeking at who piled in afterward. This matters because a metric that quietly used future information would look brilliant in a backtest and fall apart live. Honest consensus is the version you could actually have acted on.

A worked example

A regulatory-deadline market resolves inside 30 days:

• Specialist R9t (proven) takes the less popular side — consensus of 1. A real signal, but a lone one.
• A day later, Specialist A4k (also proven, independent) lands on the same side — consensus rises to 2. Two proven specialists, arriving separately, now agree.

That jump from one to two is the important one. In the research views, raising the consensus requirement (2+ or 3+ whales agreeing) is the single biggest historical lever on signal quality — and most of the improvement comes from that first jump between one whale and two. A single proven whale with a live edge is worth reading; two of them agreeing, independently, is the strongest configuration a signal can reach.