Inkling Markets in BusinessWeek
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REVEALED: How Inkling Markets is spying on BetFair, Smarkets, InTrade, HSX, NewsFutures, Consensus Point, Spigit, Zocalo, CrowdCast, and Midas Oracle
Should Adam Siegel change the name of his prediction market company?
Inkling Marketss Adam Siegel needs salad leaves to relieve tension.
If you listened to that “-lecture”- at Kellogg, send me an anonymous e-mail to cfm &-&-AT&-&- midasoracle **+DOT+** (-com-), and tell me how it went and whether Adam has convinced you of the usefulness of enterprise prediction markets.
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Nobel Prize for Economics 2009 – Prediction Accuracy
Both the bookmakers and the prection markets are utterly useless in trying to divine who will get the Nobel prize of economics.
Below is the 2009 prediction post-mortem:
1. Bookmakers
Ladbrokes’-s probabilities (odds) for the 2009 Nobel prize in economics:
Eugene Fama 2/1
Paul Romer 4/1
Ernst Fehr 6/1
Kenneth R. French 6/1
William Nordhaus 6/1
Robert Barro 7/1
Matthew J Rabin 8/1
Jean Tirole 9/1
Martin Weitzman 9/1
Chris Pissarides 10/1
Dale T Mortensen 10/1
Xavier Sala-i-Martin 10/1
Avinash Dixit 14/1
Jagdish N. Bhagwati 14/1
Robert Schiller [sic] 14/1
William Baumol 16/1
Martin S. Feldstein 20/1
Christopher Sims 25/1
Lars P. Hansen 25/1
Nancy Stokey 25/1
Peter A Diamond 25/1
Thomas J. Sargent 25/1
Dale Jorgenson 33/1
Paul Milgrom 33/1
Oliver Hart 40/1
Bengt R Holmstrom 50/1
Elhanan Helpman 50/1
Ellinor Ostrom 50/1
Gene M Grossman 50/1
Karl-Goran Maler 50/1
Oliver Williamson 50/1
Robert B Wilson 50/1
2. Betting Pools
Here is the betting in the Nobel pool at Harvard:
Robert Barro -10%
John Taylor –- 8%
Paul Milgrom –- 8%
Jean Tirole –- 6%
Oliver Williamson –- 6%
Martin Weitzman –- 6%
Eugene Fama –- 5%
Richard Thaler –- 5%
Lars Hansen –- 4%
Paul Romer –- 4%
3. Prediction Markets
Previously: Nobel Prize for Economics 2009 Predictions
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What happened to Inkling Markets?
The Inkling Markets website is not on the first page for the “-prediction markets”- query at Google Search.
It appears on the 3rd page —-where nobody will find them.
By the way, the NewsFutures website has re-made it to the 1st page.
Who needs pundits track records when we have prediction markets?
Emile Servan-Schreiber:
Mr. Kristof, if you want to keep yourself accountable and track the success of your predictions in the long run and in real-time, why not simply participate in a prediction market such as NewsFutures?
You could suggest that particular stocks be listed in relation to particular new stories and their possible outcomes. Then, as you invest in particular outcomes, your prediction portfolio would either grow or shrink, providing us all with an objective measure of your foresight. You could feature on your blog a widget displaying in real-time the “-net worth”- of your various predictions.
Other advantages of this approach would include:
– Forcing a detailed specification of possible outcomes-
– Having you compete directly (bet against) the general public-
– Measuring how much your columns can influence price movements for various predictions-
– Leading by example to show other pundits how it’-s done.
There are various types of prediction markets out there, so you can pick the venue where you’-d feel most comfortable:
– Play-money only, like NewsFutures– [or HubDub 
]
– Real betting (illegal) like Intrade-
– Charity-driven, like Bet2give.
If the idea intrigues you, please contact me at [email protected] and we can get you started right away!
Emile Servan-Schreiber
CEO, NewsFutures
Excellent.
Readers, do click on the link (which will bring you to the New York Times), and do click on “-Recommended”- under Emile’-s comment —-so that his pitch for the prediction markets will be more visible to all the people reading the comments there. Thanks. Appreciated.
The worlds #1 resource on enterprise prediction markets
– Do not waste $400 on a “-prediction market conference”- run by a San Francisco clown and attended by suckers.
– Quit listening to the Ivory Tower economic canaries who are over-hyping the prediction markets —-and have no experience whatsoever in the field of forecasting.
– Instead, do read this Inkling Markets resource, and do grill Adam Siegel on the phone. It is free, and he is the Real McCoy. [I hope that NewsFutures and CrowdCast will soon provide the same kind of EPM dossier on their respective website.]
The fact that Inkling needs five bullet points and a graph to explain short selling is a good indication it’s too complicated.
That was Jason Trost’-s comment.
But see, first, Chris Hibbert’-s comment:
My main complaint about using the “short-selling” terminology in prediction markets, is that it uses a term from finance that describes a complicated scenario to describe a simple scenario it doesn’t apply to. In financial markets, short selling means that you accrue money in order to take on a conditional obligation. When you bet against a proposition (on InTrade, Foresight Exchange or (I think) Inkling), you spend money and gain a conditional asset. In the prediction market case, you don’t have any further obligation- there’s no possibility of a margin call. The asset has a non-negative value.
I actually think the way NewsFutures describes binary outcomes is the simplest. They never talk about selling unless you already own the asset. If you don’t own any of the asset, you can either buy it, or click a button to see the opposite view, which you can also buy. They don’t have “yes” and “no”, they just have complementary wordings and titles for opposing outcomes.
Go reading all the comments, there.
Google rewards those who take part in web conversations about (enterprise) prediction markets.
Scanning the results for the query on “-prediction markets”-, I see that, focusing on the software vendors and prediction market consultants incorporated after the 2003–-2004 starting point (hence, excluding pioneer NewsFutures), Inkling Markets is ranked much higher than Consensus Point.
- No need to wonder why. Adam Siegel (the Inkling Markets CEO) is an active participant in the discussion —-thru his blog, thru comments on Midas Oracle, and thru private e-mails. (I told many times Dave to catch up. Pissing in a violin in order to compose a symphony would have been more fruitful.)
- Having a prestigious “-Chief Scientist”- is not such a determinant. It only impresses a few young, inexperienced and gullible spotty collegians. What makes the difference on the Web is your openness —-more exactly, how much high-quality information you are willing to publish, free of charge, free of advertising, and free of copyright. Take a look at Inkling Markets. Adam Siegel has made the hell of an effort to make available many explainers and case studies on enterprise prediction markets. I don’-t agree with everything he says, but I reckon that he is the only one to make the effort to reach out to web readers.
In the end, whether the judge is Google or Chris Masse, the passing of time is important. It allows us to see thru prediction market people. There are those who matter —-and those who don’-t.
UPDATE:
Google PageRank:
Inkling Markets: 6 / 10
Consensus Point: 5 / 10