– The Departed – Bingo!
– Martin Scorcese – Bingo!
– Forest Whitaker – Bingo!
– Helen Mirren – Bingo!
Hollywood Stock Exchange &- Oscars 2007 – I’-ll republish the Costakis P.R. output, later on.
TradeSports-InTrade
Take that, Barry Ritholtz!
Dan,
As you can see, I have greatly cut back my trading, as have many others. My desire is not to close my account. My dissatisfaction, as you label it, is not as immense as you call it. I do not believe anywhere in any of my emails I expressed that I would like to close my account. My goal was to help you realize what the perception from a high volume trader is.
If your final resolution to me is to suggest that I close my account, you are clearly sending a message to all as to how your company will continue to operate.
Good luck to you and the entire TEN with your company reorganization.
Todd
PS. It was great to see that the exchange closing time was changed to 3am last night from 2am, even though there were no late events. Maybe I’-m not all wrong, and what a simple fix that would have been weeks ago…-
Previous: A Big Trader’s Open Letter to TradeSports-InTrade + Second E-mail to InTrade-TradeSports
Next: InTrade-TradeSports to Todd Griepenburg: GO TO HELL.
Dan Laffan to Todd: #1 – #2
Dear Dan,
Its a shame that TS/Intrade needs to use this split up to hide behind as a reason to not solve the issues of management incompetence. As I read thru your email, I laughed to myself many times as to how your company takes a defensive stance on the issues, rather than addressing them to make the user have a more friendly experience. While I may not be 100% correct in all my opinions either, the people on my email forward list above generally agree with my opinions. If you take the time to look at some of the names on that list, you will see that it consists of millions of lots traded, and other users who have attempted to contact you regarding issues.
Even though your responses are short, and basically just repetition of some generic line I can find somewhere in website rules, I will take the time to respond to them.
1) Early closing of games. SMC/USF was not the first time. Like I said to you, review the email chain between myself and live help. It needs to be explained to them on a weekly basis for the Big Monday college basketball games, or ANY game that runs late. You create the featured game schedule, so if you have a game that starts at midnight EST, I would think you would have enough common senses to set the proper exchange closing time.
You say you do not have a policy of closing early to generate more fees. When in actuality this is a blatant lie. The pause button had NEVER been used like it is now. Your new fee structure has created a benefit to cover all in game positions at games end. Covering of these positions is a loss of revenue for your company. Many, many times events are paused early. Before the new fee structure, I had never (in 7 months) seen you pause an over/under for a game with 5 minutes to go. Now it happens all the time. If the over is achieved while the game is still going on, it gets paused to save a few cents. However, you dont pause a golfer in an event who has completed his round and is scored behind another golfer who has completed a round. But don’-t you see, TEN created this. Your fee schedule is wrong. Bottom line. Fees should be structured so there is no benefit for a winner to have to cover a position to save money, and for your employees to be forced to pause a game with time remaining on the clock.
I was unable to get help because when an issue arises during your PEAK hours, no one is there to help. You are the only website who has no real ‘-live’- help available during peak hours. One person to serve the 150 people or so logged in at am EST is not suitable. Email, and Internet ‘-live’- help that never comes online to help is not practical in my opinion.
You noted from my email my fees. Maybe you should review, I traded 508 total lots in that game, and expired (with no other choice but to expire them) 244. I was short 132, covered my position by buying 132, then went long 244. $24.40 was my forced expiry fee because you did not give me a chance to trade out of my position during the last 1:00 of clock time and 5 minutes of elapsed time. So $9 in fees in that game is impossible. Once again TEN gets on the defensive. You should willingly refund all fees in that game- in game, expiry, market makers, etc. You gave us no chance to trade in the only time during the second half where the game was close. I showed you my desire to cover by my trades on another website. So my expiry fee would have been non existent. The event traded 1500 lots at most? Is that few dollars really that important to TEN? Doing the right thing should be what is important. It should be a policy that if TEN pauses early or closes, its a fee free event. But you are not user friendly. Im still awaiting my refund, as are other STM/USF traders.
2) Your new fee structure – You are correct it’-s not the only reason why volume is suffering. No new deposit methods, while other sites have added many, Market makers leaving events, etc., etc., Do I need to review them again?
You say trading at the extremes is desirable only for avoiding fees? Do you realize what your saying? Trading at 97 my return is now .17, while it used to be .23. Do you realize what a difference that is? It used to be great to be able to take on someone else’-s low risk in an almost decided event and make some money doing so. Now you have made that a lot less desirable.
And yes, avoiding fees is the pitfall of the structure you created.
Interesting that a high volume discount is now being considered with a few days left for TEN as a whole.
3) I have also always been available to my staff members in my business via cell phone. But I always had people in each of my store locations who were authorized to make a decision. During your PEAK volume times, you have no management. Defend your position all your like, but it makes no sense at all. Overstaff during low volume times, skeleton crew when your site is making its most revenue. Great business decision.
4) Grading decisions – Haste, and incompetence. In order to pause a game at :00 like you do, someone must be watching. When the score differs from your ’-source’-, to what they see, wouldn’-t it be worth an extra minute or two to find out?
5) Financial contract grading – Intrade just has no desire to grade the contract fairly. The information is out there. Your grading is wrong, and at some point it will come back to bite you. You cannot pause a contract at a specified ending point xx:00:00. Then grade it based on data some random number of seconds later while no one can trade on that data. Maybe your new management should think about the logic of that. We all know what can happen in a few seconds.
6) Market makers – I linked you to conversations with market makers where they openly say there are disagreements with TEN. But everything has changed from when I started here a year ago, and when some of the long time traders in my forward list started here. MMers now leave events during the game, they reduce their size in game by sometimes up to 75%, they change their in game spreads. You are looking to have fair and accurate markets? Well, they don’-t exist here.
I hope you feel I represented your email fairly, ideally, and intact like you seemed concerned that I wouldn’-t. My goal here was not to make you look bad, but to make you understand what its like on the other side of the computer screen. And that is obviously a position no one at TEN has every taken the time to view their business structure from. Maybe you feel everything works great, but from the support of my ideas in many forums by huge volume traders, not just the TEN forum, things are not running smoothly from our perspective.
I am aware of the split. I honestly feel bad for whichever company is keeping the current management. Hopefully, whichever site gets the new management- they are more open to suggestions that would benefit customer satisfaction and corporate bottom line. The current management does not seem to have the desire to create the industry leader that is so often referred to in statements from management. When your users/customers call you the industry leader, only then will it be reality.
Sincerely,
Todd Griepenburg
Previous: A Big Trader’s Open Letter to TradeSports-InTrade
Next: Third E-mail to InTrade-TradeSports + InTrade-TradeSports to Todd Griepenburg: GO TO HELL.
Dan Laffan to Todd: #1 – #2
In my previous story, I regretted that the names of the two HSX founders (Max Keiser and Michael Burns) were not clearly spelled out on the HSX website. Well, here’-s from HSX’-s Alex Costakis:
I just saw your post about HSX nomination forecast accuracy. Chris, good one. But first I think the congratulations really should be directed to our traders. It’-s their collective wisdom that generates our predictions. HSX is the facilitator, they are the brain power. And, beyond that, your point is well taken. The visionary founders of this innovative website should be listed. We will correct that. Happy Oscar Night.
FANTASTIC. We should reward entrepreneurs for wealth and job creation.
Previous: HSX – Oscars Nominations Prediction Markets – Accuracy + Hollywood Stock Exchange’s Alex Costakis makes historical mistake, TOO.
XM-Sirius merger contract at TradeSports-Intrade – One single trade, only, so far. 
Via the intrepid Fabian John of the 1st Tick forum, the New York Times:
Still, it seems as if Mr. Karmazin may be paying a premium to do the deal now so that it can be rushed through the regulatory maze while the Bush administration is still in power. Many partners in mergers of equals wait around — often for years — until their stocks align. Mr. Karmazin disputes that view, contending that he wants a deal as soon as possible so that the savings can start. His view is that there “is no regulatory window.” In fact, he believes that the longer the companies, both now money losers, wait to merge, the better their chances would be in Washington. That’s because new technologies will continue to emerge that may prove to be competitive with satellite radio.
Previous: XM-Sirius merger + Sirius &- XM prediction markets
Related: Satellite Radio prediction market at Yahoo! Buzz Game
HSX:
2007 – 82%
2006 – 87.5%
2005 – 82.5%
2004 – 74.4%
2003 – 82.5%
2002 – 87.5%
2001 – 84.6%
2000 – 79.5%
1999 – 84.2%
Congrats to Max Keiser and Michael Burns.
…-
Heu, sorry, I lost it.
You should have read: “-Congrats to Alex Costakis.”-
Previous: Hollywood Stock Exchange’s Alex Costakis makes historical mistake, TOO.
Addendum: I regretted that the names of the two HSX founders (Max Keiser and Michael Burns) were not clearly spelled out on the HSX website. Well, here’-s from HSX’-s Alex Costakis:
I just saw your post about HSX nomination forecast accuracy. Chris, good one. But first I think the congratulations really should be directed to our traders. It’-s their collective wisdom that generates our predictions. HSX is the facilitator, they are the brain power. And, beyond that, your point is well taken. The visionary founders of this innovative website should be listed. We will correct that. Happy Oscar Night.
FANTASTIC. We should reward entrepreneurs for wealth and job creation.
Previous: Hollywood Stock Exchange’s Alex Costakis makes historical mistake, TOO.
So at Justin’-s and my suggestion, Intrade has just listed a contract on whether the XM-Sirius merger will close.
(We’-ve been waiting for a nice, juicy, controversial merger like this ever since Hp-Compaq.)
Interestingly, the MM has it at 60 bid/70 ask to close by June 08, but if you look at the stock prices of XMSR and SIRI, they have lost some of their initial announcement effect. There might be some free money on the table for the quick (I am abstaining).
If there is interest in this contract, I might be able to get them to run a contract on future subscription prices and subscribers (either conditional on the merger closing or just straight up). If you think about it, this could be an interesting tool for evaluating mergers in the future.
Like the idea? Spread the word.
Dear TEN Management:
I have decided to write you one final email in an attempt to discuss with you the problems that are existing on your websites, which continually go unacknowledged by your entire staff. The events of Monday evening have now pushed me to this point to try one last time to get a response from you. You will notice some attached forum posts in my email, and any emails that I reference are available to you. I will be happy to forward them to you if you’-d like.
In the past 9 months, I have learned to use your site and become quite an avid trader. My trading volume must easily rank in the top traders on your combined websites. I trade sports and financials. However, the only thing that I now like about your website is strictly the concept of it. The unresponsiveness of the management and the disregard for the customers is alarming.
On this past Monday evening, the SMC/USF game was a live featured event. The forum reference for this issue is (http://forum.tradesports.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/809603632/m/3621061412). With one minute to go in the game, the exchange was closed for maintenance. The game was a 9 point game with a 5.5 spread. The game was an 8 point game with under 30 seconds to go, and the spread was totally in play. I first dialed your 1-866 phone #, and got no live help, I then sat waiting for live help via the internet and got no response even though I was first in line for over 5 minutes. Luckily for me, the game ended in my favor and the $2200 that I had at risk was credited back to my account. If you question my intention to trade in the last 1 minute of the game, let me include my trade lines from World Sports EXchange:
02/20/2007 02:06:18 Sell 10 CB-02-19-07-M1 ST MARYS -5.5 $90 Complete Fill
02/20/2007 02:06:23 Sell 4 CB-02-19-07-M1 ST MARYS -5.5 $90 Partial Fill
02/20/2007 02:08:56 Sell 1 CB-02-19-07-M1 ST MARYS -5.5 $100 Complete Fill
Unfortunately, I was unable to cover on TS because your staff closed out the system, and was 100% unresponsive. If you review the emails to and from live help and myself on the past few Monday nights you will clearly see that I remind your staff not to close out the system during a game, and get back messages from them basically telling me that they know. Well, apparently, they don’-t know, or possibly they don’-t care. Your promise to allow trading to the end of the game/event was 100% violated. I paid $44.80 in fees to trade this STC/USF game – and was approximately 20% of your volume. TEN should do the right thing and refund EVERY trader their fees from that entire game, and quite possibly take them from the employee who continues to make late night errors. If these were my employees who kept making stupid errors that upset a large portion of my clients, I would terminate them immediately. And this is not the first occurrence. To the same extent, many events have been paused before their completion – with the final outcome still in doubt – in an event to avoid traders covering their positions, so that TEN can save every last dollar in fees. (http://forum.tradesports.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/809603632/m/7751024691).
This brings me to my next two points, the first of which being your new fee structure. We all heard what it was designed to do. Increase traders and liquidity. I read the flowery statement from the CEO (http://www.intrade.com/news/news_101.html), about open contracts, new traders, new interest, etc., etc. But it has not resulted in increased liquidity. And if it has, none of the traders can see it. Don’-t you see the problem? TEN has created this mad dash to cover at the end of events to save a few cents as a trader, and has created this urgency in its employees to get events paused so they can save a few cents also. A well thought out plan would have eliminated this need to cover. It would allow a user holding a winning contract to sit back and relax, it would allow TEN employees to take their time in pausing an event to actually make sure the event is over. In addition this new fee structure has killed trading at the extremes, which is clearly proven in volumes in late game/event situations. When I am trading with TEN on a normal basis, my fees amount to $3000 a month. I don’-t mind paying a fee for a service, but the service I get in return from TEN is no where close to what should be expected. In addition to paying fees and being ‘-charged’- for a service, have you ever considered giving a discount? This is the only site that I have used that offers nothing back to its users, and is by far the most expensive site to use. No refunds for being a large trader, no bonus, nothing. In this link you will find a proposal I made regarding a fee refund structure that would promote higher volume and liquidity and be advantageous to being a high volume trader. (http://forum.tradesports.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/809603632/m/8451026112)
The next issue is your staffing decisions. It appears that once 4pm Dublin time arrives, there is no one left capable or authorized to make a decision to deal with issues that arise. All these employees are authorized to do it forward emails and leave the problems for the morning. Do you realize that almost all of your sports volume goes on while management sleeps? The majority of your finanacial (Dow/Nasdaq) volume goes on after Dublin business hours? Even a 24 hour McDonalds has a manager on duty at 4am. Someone needs to be responsible for what happens, and to deal with any issues that come about. Judging by emails I receive from live help during non-Dublin business hours, that person does not exist.
Regarding the grading of contracts, we all know there have been many issues. I did not trade the North Korea contract, so I cannot offer my opinion on it. But I have been involved in the past few weeks in a few sports mis-grades that continue to show the haste of TEN to get their fees and get money back into the accounts. Just last night, the LSU/UK game was paused as the clock when to 0, so obviously someone must have been watching the game via satellite. But the final score that the service you use was different from the one quoted at the end of the game. Wouldn’-t it make sense to clarify the situation before grading the event? This happened in a Chicago Bulls game and another college game earlier in the month. Why the rush? Information is the key to grading the events. And in some cases TEN (and now specifically Intrade) does not have the proper information to even grade events. If you refer back to my DOW Jones Hourly posts. The hourly contracts where TEN pauses at xx:00:00, and then claims – “-The source used to expire the intra-day contracts will be the Time Stamped print at 10:00:00am ET/01:00:00pm ET or other contract specific time [or first print thereafter if there is no print at the specified time) as reported on Bloomberg.”- But in actuality the information that you use to expire these contracts does not ever even include a time stamp! The information that you expire on is some random point beyond xx:00:00 because TEN claims that the data does not exist. How can you have a contract paused at a specific time but then grade it on a data point that exists some random number of seconds beyond when we were allowed to trade it? Do you have any idea how much money I have lost out of on this technicality? Do you even care? The forum references for this issue are (http://forum.tradesports.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/809603632/m/2691083191), (http://forum.tradesports.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/169603632/m/7701093191), (http://forum.tradesports.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/169603632/m/3091048191/p/2)
On the topic of market makers, does TEN realize that their entire system is dependent upon them?? They control all events. Trading, price setting, liquidity. I will never make a market, it’-s not my trading goal. Many others feel the same. These market makers need to be compensated so they don’-t need to make their markets wider in order to protect themselves. Market makers are openly admitting to changing how they are doing business to protect themselves. Your fee structure and benefits to them should protect them —- in return they will offer traders better markets, promote more volume, and ultimately increase liquidity. This will also motivate them to stay for the entire game/event. (http://forum.tradesports.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/809603632/m/8451026112) (http://forum.tradesports.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/809603632/m/7341030702) These issues also exist with the financial contract. http://forum.tradesports.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/809603632/m/2271068702
In your defense, I must say, dealing with banking issues, and trusting my money with your company, you are second to none. I have never once had an issue regarding a deposit or withdrawal. Any problems or questions that have arose have been dealt with promptly and fairly by some excellent employees. But on the topic of depositing and withdrawing, why haven’-t some of the suggestions been taken? (http://forum.tradesports.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/809603632/m/8451026112) Why is TEN so far behind everyone else? This will hurt volume if money cant be moved freely into and out of the site. Why cant some of those quality employees be available to handle other problems and create methods of increased liquidity?
I hope you do not take my emails and forum posts as personal attacks. Like I said in my opening statements, I like the concepts of TradeSports and Intrade, however there are many issues that go unaddressed —- and that is the fault of management. I would like to see the best for Tradesports/Intrade and would like to make my experience and the experiences of other traders to be positive ones, but I also fully understand the need for a company to make a profit. My suggestions to you take both into account. I have successfully owned, operated, and restructured many businesses and have always felt my opinions to be objective in balancing corporate profits with customer satisfaction. I feel if you begin to look your policies and procedures from both standpoints, your business can run more efficiently, achieve higher profit levels, and create a more stable and trusting customer base.
Thank you for your time and consideration. I hope this time you will take the time to respond to me either via email, or any other method you choose to contact me by. I am more than willing to discuss some of these issues with you further.
Sincerely,
Todd
E-mail: todd73nj –-at++ aol –-dot $$ com
Next: Second E-mail to InTrade-TradeSports
Previous blog posts by Todd Griepenburg:
I will try to be clearer.
PROBLEM: Other than on popular prediction markets at TradeSports-InTrade and BetFair, liquidity is a problem.
HANSON’-S SOLUTION [*]: Market Scoring Rule. (See it in action: I’m betting the farm on AL Gore for the Oscars.) Cool, but not really customizable. In my example, I had the choice between three options, only. Quite poor.
WEATHER BILL SOLUTION: Forget trading on markets, forget automated market makers, forget mixing betting and trading (MSR), forget all this —-impossible to go retail with these mechanisms. Weather Bill = a sophisticated way to take client orders, very precisely. Customers get what they really want. Weather Bill offers a highly customized hedging service. (Instead of going for re-insurance money, they pass the risks to some hedge funds via a CFTC-acknowledged EBOT, but that’-s a back-office detail.)
HEDGESTREET CASE: HedgeStreet is a hedging/speculating service. (Note that they are regulated by the CFTC, not just acknowledged.) Let’-s do a thought experiment. HedgeStreet (just like BetFair did recently) becomes a bookmaker, in addition to being an exchange. They adopt a WeatherBill-like user interface to take very precise client orders —-as opposed to asking traders to fill in ask-and-bid orders and making use of an automated market makers (as HedgeStreet did, if I am correct). Of course, you would have two different user interfaces: one for the speculators and one for the hedgers. Then, do you see an algorithm/mechanism that would balance the two? And whom would they pass the risk to (if any)? And is there a way to have a mix exchange–-bookmaker business model while satisfying the CFTC at the same time?
—-
My point is that there is room for innovation, out there. BetFair has shown that you can go retail —-providing that you cater to a population of sophisticated bettors. The fact that they now offer multiples show that the betting exchange business model has some limits. Sticking with it like a fundamentalist prevents you to servicing fully your customers.
As always, innovation is the key to customer satisfaction —-and to profitability, mister Jason Ruspini.
Addendum: [*] Robin Hanson actually devised two versions of Market Scoring Rule. His combinatorial version might render this blog post totally pointless. Alas, no prediction exchange (betting exchange) is using his combinatorial Market Scoring Rule.