Daily Archives: February 14, 2008

Business looks promising for qMarkets.

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No GravatarQMarkets CEO Noam Danon tells me that they have been working hard on their site. They are working with many companies that want to run enterprise prediction markets. Best wishes to qMarkets.

[Hey, I bet they run on Drupal.]

qMarkets

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • The most significant thing in the Inkling Markets festival (past and future) is the Gartner imprimatur (“Cool Vendor in Emerging Technologies”). Tremendous impact in the business community, where CEOs are addicted to consultants. The Inkling Markets phone switchboard is red hot right now.
  • HubDub and Smarkets are creating what InTrade-TradeSports and BetFair-TradeFair never could: SOCIAL NETWORKING BETTING.
  • Prediction markets can be directly subsidized with a market maker, allowing all traders who provide info to improve the price to expect to profit. Also, the more fools the more informed traders should be attracted to profit from them, so the mix is endogenous.
  • Red Herring’s list of the top 100 North-American high-tech startups includes Inkling Markets —but not NewsFutures, Consensus Point, or Xpree.
  • Professor Koleman Strumpf explains the prediction markets to the countryland people.
  • Professor Koleman Strumpf tells CNN that a prediction market, by essence, can’t predict an upset.
  • Time magazine interview the 2 BetFair-Tradefair co-founders, and not a single time do they pronounce the magic words, “prediction markets”.

Car manufacturer Renault (Nissans twin) is now a NewsFutures client.

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Listing of NewsFutures&#8217- clients, here.

Renault

Congrats to Emile&#8217-s team.

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:

  • A case of advertisement mistaken for content
  • Michael Shermer’s The Mind of The Market
  • A prediction market panel… where only 2 out of 5 are truly prediction market experts. What a nuclear joke. This poor line-up is the reflection of the poor state of the prediction market industry in the US… and the inherent mediocrity of the conference business.
  • VentureBeat makes it like established veterans NewsFutures, Consensus Point and Inkling Markets are contemporary of just-out-of-the-egg Xpree.
  • 13 lines for Justin Wolfers, but only 2 lines and one word for Eric Zitzewitz — Mat Fogarty, what were you thinking of?
  • Ducted Wind Turbines (DFWT)
  • The Betting King — The ATP Tour was his NASDAQ.

Taxes are the largest class of risk people dont hedge. Our Jason Ruspini (allied with InTrade) wants to change that.

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Jason Ruspini, interviewed by Bloomberg:

Taxes &#8220-are the largest class of risk people don&#8217-t hedge,&#8221- said Jason Ruspini, a New York hedge fund analyst who established the market, which began trading last week. &#8220-Hopefully this year, with this election, there will be kind of an increased interest in this kind of thing.&#8221- […] &#8220-If Democrats are perceived as having a greater chance to get in the White House these tax contracts will go up,&#8221- said Ruspini, who declined to identify his employer because the market he created isn&#8217-t related to it. &#8220-If McCain is elected they won&#8217-t go up as much.&#8221- […] Right now, the market exists only for the top marginal income tax rate. Ruspini said he plans to have secondary markets based on Social Security taxes and whether Congress can restrain the alternative minimum tax from raising levies on tens of millions of households. […] &#8220-This is such a young field at this point,&#8221- Ruspini said. &#8220-Ten years from now, it&#8217-s going to be a huge market. Whenever you have a contract where there&#8217-s a lot of hedging utility, that tends to be a successful contract in the long run.&#8221- […]

Congrats to Jason.

Go read the whole piece.

Previously: Tax Futures, “In Real Life” – by Jason Ruspini

Nokias Enterprise Prediction Markets = Competitive Advantage

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Thus, the Nokia executives are pretty secretive about it. Bad luck for them, there&#8217-s a group blog on the Web that specializes on prediction markets and that digs deep. :-D So, here&#8217-s an inkling into Nokia&#8217-s enterprise prediction markets. The material was gathered from the World-Wide Web.

Maximilian Kammerer (Nokia&#8217-s Vice President CMO Global Customer Care) – (PDF file):

What technologies did you need for real-time information feedback among people working in 120 different countries?

KAMMERER: One sample element within the whole system is the Nokia Care Information Market. Like a stock exchange with a Web-based platform, people deal with information derivatives. They wager on the success of new strategies, innovations, solutions and projects. If their estimates change—the prices change. The price index creates an enormous transparency. The effectiveness of information markets relies on the fact that the collective intelligence is higher then every individual intelligence—even than that at management levels. Having understood that, our strategic decision-making is no longer purely based on historical data or expert opinions but on the intelligence of all concerned.

Translation: Nokia is embracing James Surowiscki&#8217-s wisdom of crowds. It&#8217-s my understanding that it&#8217-s the first time that that is said publicly by Nokia.

Now, let&#8217-s dig a bit. This interview was posted on the website of &#8220-1492&#8220-, a consulting firm from Austria. Now, the good question is&#8230- Which prediction market firm does supply &#8220-1492&#8243- with software and advice (which are resold to Nokia)? Suspense, suspense.

Gexid

Bernd

ANSWER: GEXID

Congrats to them.

As everybody knows in the field, prediction market firms very often have to sign NDAs before undertaking clients, which means that the public gets to know the names of those firms only when their clients allow this information to be published.

APPENDIX: Nokia is also listed as a client on Consensus Point&#8217-s website.

28 Ways to Make Money with Your Blog

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No GravatarBlogging For Dollars

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • Robin Hanson wants to rule the world —just as CEOs and heads of states do for a living.
  • Predictify got funded… Great for those who will be hired… But is it a good thing, overall?
  • Nassim Nicholas Taleb likens modern-day financial markets to medicine in the 1800s, when going to a hospital in London or Paris multiplied your risk of death by four times, he says. Similarly, quants increase risk by deploying flawed financial tools designed to reduce it, he argues.
  • TradeSports-InTrade — Check Deposits
  • BetFair Australia fought for free trade across Australian state boundaries… and won.