Monthly Archives: June 2007

Australian economist Justin Wolfers in utter disbelief, upon hearing about the demise of ECONOMIC DERIVATIVES.

Posted on by
Reply

No Gravatar

A dog in utter disbelief

Previous: ECONOMIC DERIVATIVES is dead. + Justin Wolfers on Economic Derivatives

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • IIF’s SIG on Prediction Markets
  • Science
  • Why did prediction markets do well in the pre-polling era, professor Strumpf?
  • Mozilla FireFox users, do you have trouble downloading academic papers (as PDF files) from SSRN?
  • “Impact Matrix. Used to collect and gauge the likelihood and business impact of various events in the very long term.”
  • Ends and Means of Prediction Markets — Tom W. Bell Edition
  • How to run enterprise prediction markets… legally

Short on Pablo Picasso, Long on Vincent Van Gogh??

Posted on by
2

No Gravatar

The Art Trading Fund is the first regulated fine art hedge fund.

We are an art trading hedge fund focused on 3 to 12 month returns. The Fund buys and sells art via its global network of dealers, renowned artists, auction houses and galleries. Returns are maximised through geographical price arbitrage and by removing market inefficiencies. The Fund sources art from a bank of vendors and sells through the network’s pool of highly liquid buyers. Using an objective investment process the Fund essentially monetises the substantial margins of a gallery and art dealing business – without the high fixed cost base of either – and passes that ‘alpha’ on to the end investor. The investment managers add additional value through asset allocation and via a synthetic hedge that provides downside protection.

Hey&#8230- speaking of art&#8230- anyone for art business prediction markets??

UPDATE: Rod&#8230-

About a month ago, The Economist wrote an article about this fund: Painting by numbers. In my opinion, the most interesting aspect about investing in art is that nobody really knows what a given work of art is worth. Unlike commodities such as platinum, gold or silver, works or art are highly differentiated assets, and therefore it’s hard to put a price tag on them. Ultimately, the (market) value of a painting or a sculpture is whatever the highest bidder is willing to pay for it.

Whether the hedge fund invests in startups, movies or art pieces, the basic idea is that the profits on the winners should tower the bath they take on the losers.

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • The CFTC is going to close the comments in 15 days. We have 15 days left to convince the CFTC to accept FOR-PROFIT prediction exchanges, and counter the evil petition organized by the American Enterprise Institute (which has on its payroll Paul Wolfowitz, the bright masterminder of the Iraq war).
  • The CFTC is going to close the comments in 16 days. We have 16 days left to convince the CFTC to accept FOR-PROFIT prediction exchanges, and counter the evil petition organized by the American Enterprise Institute (which has on its payroll Paul Wolfowitz, the bright masterminder of the Iraq war).
  • Brand-new scientific report certifies that starting off the Large Hadron Collider is NOT going to destroy the Earth. Glad to hear that. It means that any bets entertained on the LHC issue will be able to be resolved and winnings to be collected in the end.
  • Small Business = GOOD — Big Business = BAD
  • The letter David Pennock will never send out —well, we hope.
  • Monitor the web traffic of TradeSports.com, InTrade.com, BetFair.com, Betdaq.com, NewsFutures.com, HubDub.com, etc. —thanks to Google Trends.
  • Here’s the way to promote innovation for entry-order and analysis software packages —separate the 2 functions.

Veteran Republican Vic Gold describes VP Dick Cheney as a MEGA-MANIACAL PARANOID whose secret empire within the government has captured the George W. Bush presidency and helped bring the Republican Party to the brink of ruin.

Posted on by
Reply

No Gravatar

Eleanor Clift: A longtime confidant of the Bush and Cheney families describes the dangerous influence of the vice president.

Vic Gold&#8217-s book: Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and the Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP

Washington Post&#8217-s dossier on VP Dick Cheney

Part 1: Working in the Background
A master of bureaucracy and detail, Cheney exerts most of his influence out of public view.
Part 2: Wars and Interrogations
Convinced that the &#8220-war on terror&#8221- required &#8220-robust interrogations&#8221- of captured suspects, Dick Cheney pressed the Bush administration to carve out exceptions to the Geneva Conventions.
Sidebar: Cheney on Presidential Power
Part 3: Dominating Budget Decisions
Working behind the scenes, Dick Cheney has made himself the dominant voice on tax and spending policy, outmaneuvering rivals for the president&#8217-s ear.
Sidebar: Expanding Authority for No. 2 Spot
Sidebar: Taking on the Supreme Court Case
Part 4: Environmental Policy
Dick Cheney steered some of the Bush administration&#8217-s most important environmental decisions &#8212- easing air pollution controls, opening public parks to snowmobiles and diverting river water from threatened salmon.
Sidebar: Maintaining Connections

Vice President Cheney, standing behind the president&#8217-s desk during a July 2003 meeting, circumvented Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in 2001 on the military commissions order:

Dick Cheney

Credit: Washington Post

&#8212-

JFK got killed, but Dick Cheney gets to live.

Cockroach

&#8212-

Dick Cheney Resignation

Price for Dick Cheney Resignation at intrade.com
&#8212-

Dick Cheney will resign as VP before his 2nd term is up.


© NewsFutures

&#8212-

Static charts (for the blog archives, since the dynamic ones above will disappear after their expiry):

Dick Cheney Resignation

InTrade Dick Cheney June 2007

Dick Cheney will resign as VP before his 2nd term is up.

Dick Cheney NewsFutures June 2007

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • IIF’s SIG on Prediction Markets
  • Science
  • Why did prediction markets do well in the pre-polling era, professor Strumpf?
  • Mozilla FireFox users, do you have trouble downloading academic papers (as PDF files) from SSRN?
  • “Impact Matrix. Used to collect and gauge the likelihood and business impact of various events in the very long term.”
  • Ends and Means of Prediction Markets — Tom W. Bell Edition
  • How to run enterprise prediction markets… legally

AUSTRALIA RULES: Evan Kaldor to redefine the meaning of entrepreneurship + BetFair Australia in Tasmania set to conquer Asia + Justin Wolfers near the top of the field of prediction markets + Rupert Murdoch driving the bus in the US media land

Posted on by
Reply

No Gravatar

Australia

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • 48 hours after the launch of the “Prediction Markets” group at LinkedIn, we have already 52 members —both prediction market luminaries and simple people (trading the event derivatives or collecting the market-generated probabilities).
  • The John Edwards Non-Affair gives us an opportunity to look deep into the caldron of the wisdom of crowds.
  • We Plug This British Betting Blog On Midas Oracle Because We Like Its Name.
  • 24 hours after the launch of the “Prediction Markets” group at LinkedIn, we have already 39 members —both prediction market luminaries and simple people (trading the event derivatives or collecting the market-generated probabilities).
  • That was ubber world star Barack Obama in Berlin, during his July 2008 speech at the Victory Column. Spot all the digital cameras pointing to the socialist Messiah. Snatching something to bring at home — “see, I was there”.
  • If you want your affiliation with the “Prediction Markets” group to appear on your LinkedIn profile, then click on “Edit Public Profile Settings”, and check the “Groups” option.
  • If you want to connect with InTrade CEO John Delaney on LinkedIn…

GREEK PREDICTION MARKET RESEARCHER GEORGE TZIRALIS HAS FALLEN TO THE DARK SIDE OF THE FORCE.

Posted on by
4

No Gravatar

HE HAS JUST BOUGHT AN APPLE MACINTOSH LAPTOP, A &#8220-MACBOOK&#8221-.

&#8212-

Mike Linksvayer, a Macintosh hater, will strongly disapprove, I&#8217-m sure. :)

Apple’s penetration of the geek market over the last five years or so has bugged me … for that long.

And here&#8217-s what Mike Linksvayer, answered to Tyler Cowen&#8217-s question, &#8220-What is your most absurd view?”&#8221-:

Nearly every user interface and product from Apple has been aesthetically and functionally ugly, from the orginal MacOS to iTunes. I don’t think I can blame Steve Jobs, as NextStep was wonderful. (Yes, I know OS X is derived from NextStep. They ruined it.)

TradeSports Cost of Service Charts

Posted on by
Reply

No Gravatar

This is a comparison of the new TS fees versus the old fees. It&#8217-s meant to
give a rough idea of where the cost has gone up or down. For simplicity, it
assumes buy-and-hold in all cases, and ignores the unfortunately killed
no-fees-pre-game deal. Still, rough as this is, it should give a sense of
how you&#8217-ll be affected given your trading style, and it may give you ideas
of how to change your style to take advantage.

I hope this was helpful to some of you.
Good luck, trade smart and maximize your advantage!

Blogs are taking over the other Web-based publications.

Posted on by
Reply

No Gravatar

Tech Crunch&#8217-s Mike Arrington (who is furious at a CNET writer):

Most of the popular blogs, all of which started out as one-person shops, have now hired separate sales staff to handle sales. We have, Om has, etc. Hell, that’s the main reason we are working with FM Publishing, so that we don’t have to talk to advertisers directly. They turned out to be the wrong choice – throwing us under a bus as soon as the found it convenient, but it doesn’t change our position on the matter. We’re a small operation, we work 24 hours a day to break stories and write interesting content, and we’re trying to earn enough money to keep these things growing. Something Cooper would never understand. [CNET’s Charles Cooper is] a paid journalist who has the luxury of sitting back and opining on others, even when he has no idea what he’s talking about. It’s what too many mainstream media journalists do – write about things they don’t know and don’t care about. And that’s why blogs are stealing their page views at an alarming rate. Based on my estimates, the average A-List blogger generates 10x the page views that the average journalist does. Why? Because we’re running our own businesses, because we support each other with linking, and because we care, deeply, about what we are writing about.

Mike Arrington says, in another paragraph, that he doesn&#8217-t care about being linked to by CNET News (a news website devoted to the business of the information technology) because it generates small traffic compared to what some IT bloggers (like Om) can deliver. Entirely true. Midas Oracle was linked to by CNET News in May 2007, and we received a fistful of visitors only, compared to thousands of people coming from the economics blog Marginal Revolution.

NEXT: Google Search, the New York Times, and the blogs

YES, Harry Potter will survive J.K. Rowling’s 7th installment of the saga, The Deathly Hallows

Posted on by
Reply

Via Matt Drudge, via EITB 24, a hacker whose pseudonym is “Gabriel” tells you the ending of the book, The Deathly Hallows, yet to be published. He claims to have hacked one of the computers of the publisher. The bottom line is that Harry does not die, it seems.

I have just bought all the NewsFutures “Harry Potter will survive” contracts I could snap at $80. Plus, I was granted 10 pairs of contracts thru this program, and I sold the 10 “no” contracts to some misinformed trader at $20. Here’s my VIP page at NewsFutures. [I previously flip-flopped on this issue. :) ]

Just a short note on the NewsFutures prediction exchange: very usable. Our good doctor EJSS and his employees are detail oriented, and I think that’s the way to go. As I have written 10 times on Midas Oracle, this is about satisfying the sophisticated bettors, not the Joe Six-Packs. The folks at Pop Sci’s PPX should take notice. You know, I am on the receiving end of many youngsters’ claims to be “the next NewsFutures”. Well, my message to them: get up earlier, boys.

Here are all the blog posts and comments written about Harry Potter on Midas Oracle.

If I’m right to trust the hacker “Gabriel” and I win this game, then I’ll publish a victory blog post against Niall O’Connor and Michael Giberson. Niall O’Connor swallowed the William Hill story (All the money was on Harry Potter to die, so they stopped taking bets) like a lake carp swallows a peanut butter doughball. But, that’s too early. Let’s wait and see.

—

Harry Potter will survive The Deathly Hallows.

© NewsFutures

—

UPDATE: The sentiment of the majority favors the Niall O’Connor theory that puts William Hill at the receiving end of insider information (”Harry Potter dies”), lately. And the NewsFutures market-generated probability would reflect the (misinformed, on this one) “wisdom of crowds”, which kind of senses that an author for kids will not make the hero die. We’ll see.

UPDATE #2: eWeek.com

milw0rm is a group of politically motivated “hacktivists” whose most famous exploit was penetrating the computers of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Bombay, the primary nuclear research facility of India, on June 3, 1998. They have anti-nuclear and pro-peace agendas and, in this case, anti-Harry Potter and pro-Pope Benedict XVI.

UPDATE: The contract of the Harry Potter event derivative at NewsFutures may be flawed.

NEXT: THE FATE OF HARRY POTTER IN J.K. ROWLING’S 7TH BOOK, THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: prediction market vs. bookmaker + NEWSFUTURES JUDGES THAT HARRY POTTER IS STILL ALIVE AT THE END OF J.K. ROWLING’S 7TH NOVEL, THE DEATHLY HALLOWS.

 

How to communicate clearly and concisely

Posted on by
Reply

Robin Hanson:

To me, an ideal paper first clearly and concisely states a claim it will defend, in its title and abstract. The introduction quickly reviews the context and restates the claim, summarizing its supporting argument. The body of the paper makes good on those promises, filling out the detail, clearly flagging all required assumptions. And then the conclusion restates the claim and argument and points to further implications.

Author Profile&nbsp-Editor and Publisher of Midas Oracle .ORG .NET .COM &#8212- Chris Masse&#8217-s mugshot &#8212- Contact Chris Masse &#8212- Chris Masse&#8217-s LinkedIn profile &#8212- Chris Masse&#8217-s FaceBook profile &#8212- Chris Masse&#8217-s Google profile &#8212- Sophia-Antipolis, France, E.U. Read more from this author&#8230-

Read the previous blog posts by Chris. F. Masse:

  • Are David Pennock’s search engine prediction markets the worst marketing disaster since the New Coke?
  • Midas Oracle is incontestably [*] the best vertical portal to prediction markets.
  • Comment spam paid by Emile Servan-Schreiber of NewsFutures-Bet2Give
  • BetFair Games needs a Swedish provider to develop its gambling offerings.
  • When Markets Beat the Polls – Scientific American Magazine
  • Robin Hanson has some fanboy in India. Great. Tiny caveat: The parroting Indian writer does not acknowledge Robin Hanson by name.
  • Molecular Nanotechnology