The prediction market consultants who matter -and the others who dont

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Who are the prediction market consultants who took part of the conversation prompted by the publication of the devastating story by The Economist?

Adam Siegel of Inkling Markets

Mat Fogarty of CrowdCast

George Tziralis of AskMarkets

Jed Christiansen of Mercury

Notably absent from the conversation:

– David Perry of Consensus Point

– &#8220-Chief Scientist&#8221- Robin Hanson of Consensus Point

– Emile Servan-Schreiber of NewsFutures

– Chris Hibbert of Zocalo

– The HSX people

– The academic canaries who are over-quoted by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal

Taking all this into account, I am updating my &#8220-Consultants&#8221- listing published at CFM. I am putting the consultants who participate in web conversations ahead of the others, and in bold, so as to signal to my numerous readers who they should contact first &#8212-should they have any inquiry about enterprise prediction markets. And I will consider doing the same for the other Midas Oracle listings.

Starting today, there will be retaliations of measured and graduated amplitude against any prediction market people or prediction market company who snobs the important conversations about prediction markets &#8212-which take place on Midas Oracle or elsewhere.

You can&#8217-t be bragging everywhere that you are a &#8220-prediction market expert&#8221- and be absent from important conversations. If you don&#8217-t converse with us, then you are not such a good expert &#8212-&#8221-you&#8217-re the weakest link, bye bye.&#8221-

NEXT: It is not about Midas Oracle&#8230- It is about taking part of the conversation about (enterprise) prediction markets on the Web.

My open challenge to AskMarkets co-founder George Tziralis

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Dear George,

Congrats for the launch of AskMarkets. Best wishes to your prediction exchange and consulting firm.

Here&#8217-s the perfect opportunity to ask you the &#8220-question that kills&#8221-:

What was the social utility of the political election prediction markets during the 2008 campaign?

In other words, why should the media have informed people about the InTrade probabilities at a time Nate Silver did a near-perfect job forecasting the 2008 US elections?

What&#8217-s the added value of the political election prediction markets over the poll aggregators?

Can you cite one prediction market (other than the &#8220-who&#8217-s gonna become president?&#8221- prediction market) that has a high social utility?

Each time I ask this question to one of the prediction market luminaries (or so they think they are), I get back the same glance I would get from a dead trout &#8212-so I would appreciate if you could attempt to answer my question by publishing a blog post on Midas Oracle.

Best regards,

Chris Masse, bombastic blogger

http://www.midasoracle.org/

Prediction Markets = marketplaces for information trading… and for separating the wheat from the chaff.

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Our good friend George Tziralis:

Markets bring people together, they sum up their information and transmit it through prices.

[A prediction market is] a tool which can aggregate the opinions and knowledge of the many and transform these into a meaningful result.

Markets arise as the ideal tool to crowdsource cognitive tasks and arrive at consensus results which are typically proven to be more accurate or correct than the opinions of the few experts, as suggested by both theory, experiments and practice.

Beautifully said.

AskMarkets

Dont ask the experts. Ask the prediction markets. They know better.

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George Tziralis should have refined a bit the statement he made in the first video below &#8212-statement which I have slightly modified in the title above. We need inputs from the primary, advanced indicators, the experts, and the prediction markets. We need all of that. The prediction markets will never eliminate either the polls or the experts. The prediction markets come as a supplement in the mix.




Ask Markets

Who did best in explaining the prediction markets to the lynching crowd?

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After the New Hampshire fiasco, 16 18 people came to defend the prediction markets, so far. So far, the best takes are from:

  1. George Tziralis
  2. Robin Hanson
  3. Jonathan Kennedy
  4. and I&#8217-ll give the 4th spot to a combo, mixing takes from John Tierney, Adam Siegel (surprisingly pertinent &#8211-I bet he is on a fish diet, post Christmas :-D ), and Steve Roman.
  5. UPDATE: &#8220-Thrutch&#8220-, Emile Servan-Schreiber and Panos Ipeirotis.

AWOLs (so far): PMIA, AEI-Brookings, InTrade, TradeSports, BetFair, TradeFair, NewsFutures, Emile Servan-Schreiber, Jed Christiansen, Koleman Strumpf, Bo Cowgill, Richard Borghesi, Chris Hibbert, David Perry, Ken Kittlitz, Paul Tetlock, David Pennock, Mike Linksvayer, Brent Stinsky, David Yu, Mark Davis, David Jack, James Surowiecki, Tyler Cowen, Greg Mankiw, Donald Luskin, John Delaney [*], etc.

[*] Steve Bass tells us that John Delaney&#8217-s pre-NH CNBC appearance was awesome. I was up that day, waiting for that CNBC segment, but failed to spot it. If somebody sends me the YouTube link, I&#8217-ll publish it here.

Prediction markets, idea futures, event-driven futures, European call options, event derivatives…

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&#8230- and now &#8220-information derivatives&#8220-. (Via George Tziralis) What is remarkable is that you can shorten it as &#8220-ID&#8221- (or &#8220-IDs&#8220-, plural). (Prediction markets are often referred as &#8220-PMs&#8221-.)

My Question To My Readers: Which term(s) do you like most? In my short list, in the blog title, I forgot to mention terms including the word &#8220-stock&#8221-, which Alex Kirtland told us is the most commonly understood by &#8220-people&#8221- (as opposed to prediction market professionals).

My Questions To Bernd Ankenbrand: Would you mind telling us more about GEXID, here, on this blog? And do you know some English-speaking colleagues of yours who would like to be registered at Midas Oracle? And Gutten Tag!&#8230- (That means Bonjour, right?)

Addendum: This is hilarious. They needed to consult an army of German lawyers to make sure that play-money prediction exchanges won&#8217-t be assimilated with gambling operators.

Are you trading with real money?

No. In all gexid markets we trade with gexid euro (play money). Your portfolio at the end can be converted in prices the issuer prices.

Is trading at gexid like gambling?

No. gexid is not a place for gambling. Independent expert opinions by several lawyers in Germany confirm this fact. Therefore there is not need for regulating gexid. Upon request gexid will provide you those expert opinions.