Midas Oracle .COM

Nigel Eccles November 13th, 2008

The election might be over, but for the politics geeks out there the fun is nowhere near done! Everyone seems to be talking about who’ll be in Obama’s cabinet, but if you’re looking for the real numbers breakdown based on the wisdom of the crowds, look no further. We’ve already correctly predicted Rahm Emanuel as Obama’s Chief of Staff!

Secretary of State: Initially many suspected John Kerry, in recent days though his stock dropped significantly (less than 20% chance now), even being overtaken by Bill Richardson at one point. Hubdub forecasts though that Obama won’t pick either Richardson or Kerry instead he’ll look for someone else, not currently known.

Who will be Obama’s Secretary of State?

Secretary of Defense: Along with others, Hubdubbers see Robert Gates, the current SecDef to be continuing his role after Bush leaves. Gate’s price is over 50% which is a good indicator, and his closest competitor is Chuck Hagel at just 16%.

Who will be President Obama’s Secretary of Defense?

Attorney General: Janet Napolitano is the front runner for Attorney General. Some rumors from the beltway even point to Napolitano being quite happy with the possibility.

Who will be President Obama’s Attorney General?

Energy Secretary: For all the Schwarzenegger fans out there I’m sorry to say, but it’s unlikely we’ll get Arnie in the cabinet to ‘terminate’ global warming. However I’ll admit it’d be awesome!

Will Arnold Schwarzenegger be President Obama’s Energy Secretary?

Treasury Secretary: Although suggestions of either Paulson staying on or Obama adviser, friend and billionaire Warren Bufftet taking Paulson’s place were intriguing, Hubdub is forecasting Federal Reserve Bank of New York President Timothy Geithner will take the spot.

Who will be the selection of a new Treasury secretary under President Obama?

Other Notable Picks According to Hubdub Markets:

This post was cross posted from the Hubdub blog.

Tags: HubDub, Obama, Secretary of State, United States Secretary of Defense, United States Secretary of the Treasury

Chris F. Masse November 12th, 2008

If you are using the InTrade or HubDub prediction markets on the next Obama cabinet, then I recommend:

- this HubDub blog post that gathers the latest;

- that news article, and that PDF file, which gives all the names of the candidates.

Good luck for your trades. (I don’t bet on this topic.)

Tags: Barack Obama, US politics, White House

Chris F. Masse November 7th, 2008

Missouri and one electoral vote in Nebraska are still up in the air.

When the dust settles, we will publish a post-mortem (and link to those published elsewhere) on how the prediction markets did, by comparison to the state polls and/or the political experts.

-

-

Tags: 2008 US presidential elections, US politics

Chris F. Masse November 6th, 2008

Tags: Barack Obama, dog, dogs, HubDub

Chris F. Masse November 6th, 2008

The purpose of this present post is to see whether the Inkling chart widgets go into feeds.

-

-

-

Tags: chart widgets, charts, dynamic charts, Inkling, Inkling Markets

Nigel Eccles November 5th, 2008

Now all the US states bar North Carolina have been called, the electoral votes vote tally is 349 to Obama and 173 to McCain. Obama is currently expected to take North Carolina which would take his final tally to 364 electoral college votes.

Using this electoral vote tally we can do a quick analysis of how accurate the various pollsters and prediction markets have been. The 3 Blue Dudes site has been tracking 84 different pollsters, pundits and prediction markets for the past few months. On the day before election day they took a snapshot of the current forecasts. For prediction markets, 3 Blue Dudes has recorded Intrade as forecasting 346 and Hubdub 364. However it also records data from Election Map, which itself pulls its data from Intrade, with a forecast of 364. So when the data grab of Election Map was made it was also bang on the money.

How did the pollsters and pundits compare? Not so good. Only 6 of the 81 other pollsters and pundits predicted Obama winning 364 electoral votes.

Some of the major media sites, pollsters and pundits that didn’t do so well were:

New York Times: 291 to Obama (84 undecided)

CNN: 291 to Obama (90 undecided)

Washington Post: 319 to Obama

Zogby: 311 to Obama (51 undecided)

Karl Rove: 338 to Obama

All in all, a great night for Obama and a great night for prediction markets.

[Cross-posted in part from the HubDub blog]

Tags: 2008 US presidential elections, accuracy, Barack Obama, electoral college, HubDub, InTrade, prediction accuracy, prediction markets

Chris F. Masse November 5th, 2008

-

I haven’t seen anything on InTrade, yet, but I am sure they will put something up.

-

Tags: Barack Obama, HubDub, InTrade, Jesse Jackson Jr., prediction markets, US politics, US Senate

Chris F. Masse November 5th, 2008

Here’s a visual post-mortem of the 2008 US presidential elections.

-

A) InTrade, on November 5, 2008 (screen shot taken at 2:00 am):

-

-

Prediction Markets & State Polls, on November 4, 2008:

-

-

B1) Prediction Markets (on November 4, 2008)

-

-

InTrade (screen shot taken at mid-day ET, November 4, 2008):

-

InTrade (screen shot taken in the morning, November 4, 2008):

-

BetFair (screen shot taken in the morning, November 4, 2008):

-

HubDub (screen shot taken in the morning, November 4, 2008):

-

-

Professor King Banaian:

Chris Masse is instructive: Don’t oversell.

-

Indeed.

You might re-read Emile Servan-Schreiber’s post, which deals with interpreting prediction market prices as probabilities.

-

-

-

-

B2) State Polls (on November 4, 2008)

-

-

Karl Rove (on November 4, 2008):

-

CNN (on November 4, 2008):

-

Pollster (on November 4, 2008):

-

Electoral-Vote.com (on November 4, 2008):

-

Nate Silver (on November 4, 2008):

-

PREDICTION MARKET PROBABILITIES

-

Explainer On Prediction Markets

-

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 represents the imputed perceived likelihood of the partially uncertain event (i.e., its aggregated expected probability). A 60% probability means that, in a series of events each with a 60% probability, the favored outcome is expected to occur 60 times out of 100, and the unfavored outcome is expected to occur 40 times out of 100.

Each prediction exchange organizes its own set of real-money and/or play-money markets, using either a CDA or a MSR mechanism —with or without an automated market maker.

Prediction markets enable us to attain collective intelligence. Prediction markets produce dynamic, objective probabilistic predictions on the outcomes of future events by aggregating disparate pieces of information that the traders bring when they agree on prices. The event derivative traders are informed by the primary indicators (i.e., the primary sources of information), like the polls, for instance. These informed speculators then execute their transactions based on their anticipations about the future —anticipations that will be either confirmed or infirmed.

The value of a set of prediction markets consists in the added accuracy that these prediction markets provide relative to the other forecasting mechanisms, times the value of accuracy in improved decisions, minus the cost of maintaining these prediction markets, relative to the cost of the other forecasting mechanisms. According to Robin Hanson, a highly accurate prediction market has little value if some other forecasting mechanism(s) can provide similar accuracy at a lower cost, or if very few substantial decisions are influenced by accurate forecasts on its topic.

-

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

-

Tags: 2008 US presidential elections, accuracy, Barack Obama, BetFair, betting markets, event derivative markets, Forecasting, HubDub, InTrade, John McCain, prediction accuracy, prediction markets

Chris F. Masse November 4th, 2008

I have been looking for a while at the various electoral map predictions (those generated by state polls and those generated by prediction markets), and I have been interested in 2 states in particular: North Carolina and Missouri.

The reason for my deep interest in those 2 states is that those are the only states that Karl Rove and InTrade disagree on.

I’ll keep you updated on who will win this contest.

-

Here are Karl Rove’s electoral projections:

-

Here is the latest from InTrade:

-

- This is a dynamic electoral map from InTrade, which updates itself each time you refresh this webpage. Click on the image, and open the website (ElectoralMarkets.com) in another browser tab to get the bigger version. - [Feed readers: Download this webpage to visualize this InTrade widget, since it doesn't display within feed readers.]

-

- This is a dynamic electoral map from InTrade, which updates itself each time you refresh this webpage. - [Feed readers: Download this webpage to visualize this InTrade widget, since it doesn't display within feed readers.]

-

-

-

-

- This is a dynamic electoral map from HubDub, which updates itself each time you refresh this webpage. - [The HubDub dynamic charts listed below go into feeds.]

- HubDub’s prediction markets on the 2008 electoral college:

-

-

-

-

Tags: 2008 US presidential elections, betting markets, event derivative markets, Forecasting, InTrade, Karl Rove, polls, prediction markets, state polls

Chris F. Masse November 4th, 2008

Prediction markets are usually set up to forecast outcomes of external news events. Here are some prediction markets that aim at foretelling issues internal to the prediction exchanges that organize them. Not surprisingly, HubDub is the prediction exchange that runs the biggest number of prediction markets about itself.

-

Intrade Totally Overloaded / Crash on Election Day for 1 hour+?

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

Tags: betting exchanges, betting markets, event derivative exchanges, event derivative markets, HubDub, InTrade, InTrade .NET, prediction exchanges, prediction markets