While InTrade CEO John Delaney is deceiving the journalists to sell his wares, Tom Snee of the Iowa Electronic Markets is telling them the truth: BEWARE THE VP-CANDIDATE PREDICTION MARKETS, THEY JUST AGGREGATE RUMORS.

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BBC News:

According to Tom Snee of the Iowa Electronic Market, at Iowa University, futures markets need more hard information than they get in the veepstakes, to reliably predict a result.

Markets are very good at predicting elections, he says – but not choices being made inside Barack Obama&#8217-s or John McCain&#8217-s head.

Thank God for the BBC.

Thank God for the Iowa Electronic Markets.

Shame on John Delaney &#8212-over 3 generations of Delaneys.

Other than Tom Snee (the IEM spin doctor), Chris Masse and Justin Wolfers are the only prediction market analysts to have sent out warnings about the VP-candidate prediction markets.

8 thoughts on “While InTrade CEO John Delaney is deceiving the journalists to sell his wares, Tom Snee of the Iowa Electronic Markets is telling them the truth: BEWARE THE VP-CANDIDATE PREDICTION MARKETS, THEY JUST AGGREGATE RUMORS.

  1. ENDLESS VEEPSTAKES: Why you should never trade on VP prediction markets, and why their probabilistic predictions are as stochastic as Paris Hilton's daily dress picks. | Midas Oracle .ORG said:

    […] NEXT: While InTrade CEO John Delaney is deceiving the journalists to sell his wares, Tom Snee of the Iowa …. […]

  2. Caveat Bettor said:

    I concede that VP prediction markets will be less accurate than other markets which reflect better information (and liquidity).

    But the VP prediction markets are worse than what other mechanism, exactly?  I wonder if any of these eminent naysayers can answer me that?

  3. Chris F. Masse said:

    The prediction markets are not worse than other mechanism… But I don’t want any mechanism to aggregate rumors. That’s the point.

  4. Barack Obama + Joe Biden - THE PREDICTION MARKETS NAILED IT… triple alas (for my reputation as a world-wide prediction market pundit, and for the debate on the different quality of the various primary indicators out there). | Midas Oracle .ORG said:

    […] have over-estimated the secretiveness of Barack Obama’s decision process. The chart above […]

  5. The vetting of the many potential Democratic vice president nominees was not as secretive as I thought. - Bo Cowgill was right, in hindsight. | Midas Oracle .ORG said:

    […] Bo Cowgill, back in May 2008 (when I started to act as a prophet of doom): […]

  6. Mitt Romney will be the Republican vice presidential nominee. | Midas Oracle .ORG said:

    […] I said from day one to be careful with the VP prediction markets. […]

  7. Paul Kedrosky … sucks. - Plus, Jason Trost is bashing InTrade and BetFair in order to boost his startup, Smarkets. | Midas Oracle .ORG said:

    […] the way, I was pleased to see (elsewhere) that Emile Servan-Schreiber of NewsFutures has the same (bad) opinion about those VP prediction markets as I do. I will index Emile in this file, next week. Emile is a smart and experienced man, and we […]

  8. Medemi said:

    I don’t get your point, Chris.

    If you’re saying the VP-candidate markets are not representative of the predictability of prediction markets, then I can see what you mean. If you’re saying there’s more integrity in betting on a soccer match (and therefore punters need to be warned), I can also agree with that.

    But I thought this was about fulfilling the traders needs, and the predictability aspect comes second.

    Also, when you’re going to focus on the markets aggregating rumors, you’re getting close to issues like market manipulation and insider trading. I haven’t heard you talk about them and how we should deal with it. That would be the broad approach IMO, and keep you from having to evaluate specific markets again and again. With zero results.

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