Finally, we need to know if this was only possible, because it was a fairly simple experimental model. Will the same decision-maker’s ability exist in extremely complex public policy markets?
Paul Hewitt doubts.
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Tag Archives: manipulation
Could think tanks impact the socially valuable prediction markets?
There is no manipulation going on in the InTrade political prediction markets.
– InTrade CEO John Delaney has conducted an investigation on the alleged manipulation. The suspicious moves in prices were in fact caused by the buying and selling made by an “-institutional”- trader (a hedge fund, I presume) who has been managing “-certain risks”- (hedging).
– Jason Ruspini, who wrote before this report came out, does believe that manipulations “-non-informational”- trades have been prevalent on InTrade. (We will see whether Jason changes his mind in light of InTrade’-s debunking report.)
WORLDS #1 PREDICTION MARKET GURU PINCHES THE NOSES OF NOBEL LAUREATE GARY NECKER AND JUDGE RICHARD POSNER.
Extreme Prediction Markets & Ethics
While Robin Hanson was busy signing Bob’-s petitions and blablabling on philosophy, Jason Ruspini answered the questions.
Jason Ruspini (”-The Brain”-) has established himself as one of the experts in the field of prediction markets. Listen up.
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1-2) These markets could have insider trading restrictions and forced settlement w/ new contract set.
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3-4) The CFTC/NFA could monitor a “large trader” list and have special reporting requirements for them. If trading seemed unreasonable given the objective outlook for a candidate, they could begin an investigation.
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5) Don’t void or unwind the market, just settle the contracts at the price immediately before the event and then start a new set of contracts as soon as possible.
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The only problem there is what happens when a price manipulation precedes an event such that the manipulated outcome locks-in the “manipulated” prices. The arrangements in 3-4) would go a long way towards addressing that scenario. Failing that, contracts could be worded in such a way to allow for freezing funds and unwinding trades in that sort of situation. Also, it would be difficult for a trader to set-off a feedback loop in a liquid binary market even if they were very large.
Mike Smithson says that one impersonator (that is, someone pretending to be Mike Smithson) published comments on the PoliticalBetting.com thread about the London political elections, giving false exit poll information, in order to influence the betting prices (which I understand, partially, at least
Starting now, his blog will only publish comments from already approved commenters —-comments from brand-new commenters will have to be manually approved.
We have had this procedure in place on Midas Oracle for some time, now.
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QUESTION TO THE READERS: Could anyone guess what Nassim Nicholas Taleb would think of the prediction markets?
Fortune:
The idea that catastrophe can strike without warning does not seem particularly hard to understand. Why doesn’-t Wall Street ever seem to allow for that possibility? And why doesn’-t it learn from past catastrophes?
Let me blame business schools and the financial economics establishment – they have a vested interest in promoting models and devaluing common sense.
I worked on Wall Street for close to two decades in trading and risk management of derivatives. I noticed that while portfolio models got worse and worse in tracking reality, their use kept increasing as if nothing was happening. Why? Because in the past 15 years business schools accelerated their teaching of portfolio theory as a replacement for our experiences. It looks like science, and they have been brainwashing more than 100,000 students a year. There is no way my experiences can be transmitted to the next generation because of these schools. We’-ve had fiascoes in finance that they need to neglect because they contradict their models. The problem may also be the Nobel in economics that gave a stamp to these junky theories. Someone needs to make the Nobel committee account for this, for the damage to society – and I hope to do so.
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Strongly anti-establishment guy. (More here, last year, with Felix Salmon.)
Could anyone guess what Nassim Nicholas Taleb would think of the prediction markets? Would he think that our prediction market researchers (Robin Hanson, Justin Wolfers, and company) are “-giving stamp to junky theories”-, hence “-damaging society”-?
Anyone (who knows NNT) willing to guess???…-
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UPDATE: Jason Ruspini…-
The basic answer is obvious – Taleb considers predicting as such to be nonsense, although the papers in this area by Wolfers et al only need appeal to information aggregation.
I do think Taleb would be very skeptical of the model-based papers on manipulation. While he and Robin Hanson seem to have some similar interests, this might be a difference. Consider Taleb’-s “-Fat Tony”- and “-Dr John”- characters from The Black Swan. Fat Tony is more intuitive and “-street-smart”-. Dr John is more “-platonic”-, nerdy, and more apt to make mistakes because of a bad model or assumptions. The characters are each posed the following question: “-Say I flip a fair coin ten times and it comes up heads all ten times. What are the chances of it coming up heads on the next flip?”- Dr John replies, “-Elementary. They are independent events, so 50%.”- Fat Tony says, “-Less than 10% because the coin is probably loaded. Your assumptions are wrong or you are lying!”-
The model-based papers on manipulation assume equal trading budgets and no feedback trading. These assumptions rarely hold.
Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:
- “I’m very concerned with the international situation and what’s happening in Tibet.”
- How to win $100 in play money at HubDub, regardless of any political outcome
- Problem 17: Prediction Markets — USMA D/Math Problem of the Week — Submission Deadline: April 3, 2008 at 1600
- Midas Oracle is now powered by WordPress 2.5 —and you should be too.
- Would be fun to have the equivalent for event derivatives.