Tag Archives: HubDub

Reuters partner with HubDub.

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YOU HEARD IT ON MIDAS ORACLE FIRST.

Once again, we out-scoop Freakonomics and Overcoming Whatever.

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HubDub:

Reuters partners with Hubdub to put a presence on the prediction market site.

Reuters is pleased to announce their new presence on Hubdub, the virtual prediction market site.

Hubdub allows users to trade predictions with virtual money on the outcomes of breaking news stories and future events, with approximately 2 million Hubdub dollars traded daily. As part of a new, dedicated Reuters section within the site Reuters generates questions for users to trade on based on the latest breaking news and ranging in topics from the current credit crunch to the 2008 presidential election. Reuters questions are already among the most popular on Hubdub.

Additional tools and resources are also included to help build a Reuters community within the site, including a &#8220-friends&#8221- application, comment capabilities, links to the top Reuters stories of the day and Reuters market widgets, found at http://www.hubdub.com/partners/reuters.

Finally, because Hubdub prediction markets aggregate thousands of trades, the site often produces accurate forecasts on the likelihood of future events. Beyond weighing in on the outcome, users are able to reference the site for up-to-the-minute information on the public&#8217-s predictions about breaking news from Reuters.

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HubDub partnership program:

Become a Partner

Partner with Hubdub to engage and grow your community. Enrich your content for your users by adding forecasts, and drive traffic by creating a branded presence on Hubdub.

As a partner you can:
* Create branded questions on Hubdub for anyone to predict, with links back to your relevant content
* Sponsor and link to particular questions and get links back to your relevant content
* Get a branded profile page to highlight your questions and display a relevant news feed from your site or blog
* Post questions, graphs and forecasts as widgets alongside your content to engage users
* It&#8217-s all completely free!

– News sites – engage your readers with forecasts they return to
– Bloggers – get novel content to enrich your posts and drive relevant traffic
– Special interest sites – give your community informative forecasts and attract new users

Become a partner – it&#8217-s free!

Create an account on Hubdub and drop us an email asking to become a partner. Once we review your application we&#8217-ll upgrade your account to a partner one. Easy!

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UPDATE: HubDub PR

InTrade vs. the other prediction exchanges

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Justin Wolfers gives his views about the (now past) differences between the probabilistic predictions given by InTrade on the 2008 US presidential elections&#8230- and the ones generated by the other real-money and play-money prediction exchanges. One hypothesis: US political insiders can&#8217-t access BetFair, legally, and thus can&#8217-t arbitrage. (But they can trade legally on the Iowa Electronic Markets, NewsFutures, Inkling, and HubDub, one could retort.)

Emile Servan-Schreiber&#8217-s hypothesis still holds.

Or else &#8212-your own hypothesis is welcome.

P.S.: The latest news is that InTrade now gives Barack Obama slightly above John McCain.

The prediction exchanges that have fully embraced the prediction market approach

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These prediction exchanges present prices as probabilities (expressed in percentages):

– HubDub

– InTrade .NET &#8230- [*] &#8230- would get the full point if they were to switch the label &#8220-price&#8221- for &#8220-probability&#8221- on their charts.

– NewsFutures &#8230- gets half a point. No mention of &#8220-probabilities&#8221- on their charts.

– Inkling Markets &#8230- gets a quarter of a point.

– TradeFair &#8230- gets an honorable mention, but won&#8217-t show its charts to the non-registered public. :(

[*] Which prefigures what InTrade .COM is going to be, soon, if I understood well my Deep Throat&#8217-s tip.

As for the ultra innovative YooPick, is it yet another case of &#8220-do what I say, not what I do&#8220-?&#8230- :-D

APPENDIX: Lance Fortnow is PMA compatible:

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UPDATE: See the comments&#8230-

Nigel Eccles (the CEO of HubDub) and Robin Hanson (the inventor of MSR) have some explaining to make about the extreme zigzagging of the Barack Obama event derivative (in blue on this static compound chart). Look at the right end of the chart.

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UPDATE:

Nigel Eccles:

There was a bug in that chart which is now fixed. However the excess volatility is still there. The problem is that our early markets were created with a liquidity parameter which was too low. That is fixed with more recent markets. However we are also looking at modifying the MSR in some significant ways.

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Previously:

– the latest InTrade predictions

– Emile Servan-Schreiber&#8217-s post on market arbitrage

Is Intrade out on a limb?

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As I write this, Intrade gives the advantage to McCain over Obama and has the Republican party even with the Democratic party to win the election, whereas all the other prediction markets, meaning IEM, Betfair, and the NewsFutures play-money kind still favor a Democrat in the White House. That disconnect prompted Chris to wonder aloud whether Intrade is faster than the other markets to incorporate the latest polls, perhaps because of its &#8220-bigger liquidity&#8221-.

That&#8217-s an interesting reaction on several levels.

First, reactivity and accuracy are not to be confused for one another. Given that market prices are supposed to be more accurate and more stable that fickle U.S. raw polls (Berg et al, 2008), one should not necessarily be impressed by the market that is quickest to mirror the latest polls. I very much doubt that traders in the &#8220-other&#8221- markets have not heard about the latest polls giving McCain an edge. Rightly or wrongly – it is too soon to tell – they just gave those polls less weight that the Intrade traders apparently did.

Second, the argument from &#8220-bigger liquidity&#8221- is not receivable. Recently, Paul Tetlock analyzed Tradesports data in depth and found that more liquidity may in fact make the market dumber. He concludes: &#8220-In both sports and financial prediction markets, the calibration of prices to event probabilities does not improve with increases in liquidity- and the forecasting resolution of market prices actually worsens with increases in liquidity.&#8221-

My personal theory is that Intrade has a hair-trigger Republican bias which is not found in the other markets, because Intrade appeals to, and is marketed to, the more Republican-leaning segments of the U.S. population. In my opinion, the Intrade/Tradesports Republican bias was already evident in the 2004 election, as this analysis shows.

Of course, I may be completely wrong. In any case, I find today&#8217-s dual disconnect between the polls and most of the markets, on the one hand, and between Intrade and the other markets, on the other hand, to be two very interesting data points that should be duly recorded so we can come back to them later, with hindsight.

2008 US Elections Prediction: John McCain is now the favorite at InTrade, while all the other prediction exchanges still have Barack Obama ahead. Is InTrade quicker to incorporate the latest polls because of the bigger liquidity of its prediction markets?

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#1. Explainer On Prediction Markets

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Prediction markets produce dynamic, objective probabilistic predictions on the outcomes of future events by aggregating disparate pieces of information that traders bring when they agree on prices. Prediction markets are meta forecasting tools that feed on the advanced indicators (i.e., the primary sources of information). Garbage in, garbage out&#8230- Intelligence in, intelligence out&#8230-

A prediction market is a market for a contract that yields payments based on the outcome of a partially uncertain future event, such as an election. A contract pays $100 only if candidate X wins the election, and $0 otherwise. When the market price of an X contract is $60, the prediction market believes that candidate X has a 60% chance of winning the election. The price of this event derivative can be interpreted as the objective probability of the future outcome (i.e., its most statistically accurate forecast). A 60% probability means that, in a series of events each with a 60% probability, then 6 times out of 10, the favored outcome will occur- and 4 times out of 10, the unfavored outcome will occur.

Each prediction exchange organizes its own set of real-money and/or play-money markets, using either a CDA or a MSR mechanism.

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More Info:

– The Best Resources On Prediction Markets = The Best External Web Links + The Best Midas Oracle Posts

– Prediction Market Science

– The Midas Oracle Explainers On Prediction Markets

– All The Midas Oracle Explainers On Prediction Markets

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#2. Probabilistic Predictions = Charts Of Prediction Markets

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Put your mouse on your selected chart, right-click, and open the link in another browser tab to get directed to the prediction market page of your favorite exchange.

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2008 US Elections

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InTrade

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2008 US Electoral College

2008 Electoral Map Prediction = InTrade – Electoral College Prediction Markets = Probabilistic predictions for the 2008 US presidential elections based on market data from InTrade Ireland = electoralmarkets.com

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– This is a dynamic chart, which is up to date. Click on the image, and open the website in another browser tab to get the bigger version.

2008 US ELECTORAL MAP PREDICTION: The 2008 US elections thru the prism of the prediction markets – 2008 US presidential and congressional elections – US President Prediction + US Congress Prediction – Barack Obama vs. John McCain

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#1. Explainer On Prediction Markets

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Prediction markets produce dynamic, objective probabilistic predictions on the outcomes of future events by aggregating disparate pieces of information that traders bring when they agree on prices. Prediction markets are meta forecasting tools that feed on the advanced indicators (i.e., the primary sources of information). Garbage in, garbage out&#8230- Intelligence in, intelligence out&#8230-

A prediction market is a market for a contract that yields payments based on the outcome of a partially uncertain future event, such as an election. A contract pays $100 only if candidate X wins the election, and $0 otherwise. When the market price of an X contract is $60, the prediction market believes that candidate X has a 60% chance of winning the election. The price of this event derivative can be interpreted as the objective probability of the future outcome (i.e., its most statistically accurate forecast). A 60% probability means that, in a series of events each with a 60% probability, then 6 times out of 10, the favored outcome will occur- and 4 times out of 10, the unfavored outcome will occur.

Each prediction exchange organizes its own set of real-money and/or play-money markets, using either a CDA or a MSR mechanism.

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More Info:

– The Best Resources On Prediction Markets = The Best External Web Links + The Best Midas Oracle Posts

– Prediction Market Science

– The Midas Oracle Explainers On Prediction Markets

– All The Midas Oracle Explainers On Prediction Markets

–

–

#2. Probabilistic Predictions = Charts Of Prediction Markets

–

Put your mouse on your selected chart, right-click, and open the link in another browser tab to get directed to the prediction market page of your favorite exchange.

–

–

InTrade

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2008 US Electoral College

2008 Electoral Map Prediction = InTrade – Electoral College Prediction Markets = Probabilistic predictions for the 2008 US presidential elections based on market data from InTrade Ireland = electoralmarkets.com

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– This is a dynamic chart, which is up to date. Click on the image, and open the website in another browser tab to get the bigger version.