One or two traders were caught out Friday, following a late afternoon surge in the share price of both Sportingbet and PartyGaming. Sportingbet shares were up 15.9% at 43 3/4p whilst PartyGaming climbed 9.5% to 26p.

Two factors may have been responsible for the rise- firstly, the fact that the tiny Caribbean resort may be about to use a World Trade Organization ruling to compel the United States to legalize online gaming- second, a rather spurious belief that the Interactive Media Entertainment &amp- Gaming Association might be successful in its lawsuit against the United States Department of Justice, in which the industry body requests a Temporary Restraining Order against the enforcement of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.

The chances of either event forcing the US&#8217-s hand, any time soon, are slim- nonetheless these shares feed on rumour and it would be no surprise to see more speculative buying in the weeks ahead.

The Financial Times, meanwhile, has learned that the US proposal in response to the WTO ruling, involves opening opportunities in the storage, warehouse services and technical testing sectors to make up for the gaming restrictions. Gambling groups are believed to be pressing the European Union to reject the offer as inadequate.

Cross-posted from Betting Market by Niall O&#8217-Connor

Later this week, NewsFutures will have another great opportunity to introduce prediction markets into the consciousness of mighty American businessmen and women.

At the invitation of the organizers of the September 2007 DiamondExchange event, I will take part in a panel discussion on &#8220-technologies to raise your organization&#8217-s IQ&#8221- led by Chunka Mui, author of Unleashing the Killer App. The exclusive event features an outstanding list of speakers including Marvin Zonis, professor emeritus of the University of Chicago, Dan Bricklin, inventor of VisiCalc, Cory Ondrejka, who leads the team developing Second Life, and Ray Kurtzweil, who needs no introduction a all.

The event, titled &#8220-Enterprise 3.0: new representations, new markets&#8221-, is organized by the high-powered consulting firm Diamond (Nasdaq: DTPI). It&#8217-s nice to see that, having preceded the &#8220-Web 2.0&#8243- bubble, prediction markets are already moving past it and being associated with the number 3&#8230-

The event will be held at the famous Greenbrier, in White Sulfur Springs, WV, whose tag line is &#8220-defining luxury since 1778&#8243-! Needless to say, I look forward to this fantastic opportunity to evangelize this particular crowd about the virtues of prediction markets.

&#8211-Emile (for NewsFutures)

[cross-posted from the NewsFutures blog]

We try not to post directly about our platform or new clients on Midas Oracle, leaving it up to Chris to highlight the good&#8230- and the bad &#8230- but we thought people might be interested in a new capability we just launched this morning since it&#8217-s actually something everyone can try. You can now go to http://www.inklingmarkets.com and sign up for a free trial of a private, fully-featured marketplace. Just choose a name and URL for your marketplace, fill in your desired username and password, and you&#8217-re off and running. From day 1, when we launched Inkling, we have been big believers in allowing people to try before they buy, and this is the latest extension of that &#8211-hopefully making it even easier to try our platform beyond just being active on our public marketplace. This is something you can securely run inside your organization or publicly. We&#8217-ve also created a new help/reference section you&#8217-ll see as an administrator when you login to your marketplace. There are lots of lessons learned and best practices about managing a marketplace, providing appropriate incentives, creating effective markets, etc. Let us know if you have any questions/feedback or run in to any issues.