Monday, January 14, 2008

Prediction Market Problems

My co-blogger is fond of keeping everyone up to date on the latest prices from the political prediction markets. Supposedly, these markets generate accurate predictions by aggregating the opinions of a very diverse set of people with access to different types of information.

Here's an article from Slate Magazine that discusses why prediction markets have performed so poorly of late. The author argues that "the price movement tends to respond to conventional wisdom and polling data; it doesn't lead them." One wonders as well whether the traders on these sites are really a diverse set of people with access to different types of information.

2 comments:

  1. It might be interesting to see whether those traders in Iowa and New Hampshire who participated in the Hillary/Obama markets acted differently than those outside of the states. Unlike those relying on the NYTimes and CNN as a news source on the primaries, they might have had a better view of how events would have played out.

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  2. I won’t really wish to go with predictions, as they are putting my funds in risk. I will rather wait for certain trends to have ago. My main focus as trader is to have things working in simple way, as that is how I can get success. This is possible thanks to OctaFX broker and their terrific facilities with small spreads which is just around 0.2 pips while there is also massive bonuses up to 50% on deposit, so this helps me stay calm and relax.

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