Anyone knows the reasoning behind HubDub suspending all their Republican VP prediction markets?
Chris F. Masse August 29th, 2008
Bizarre.
No official VP announcement has been made, yet. Why can’t we trade on HubDub till the very end…???????…
HubDumb…?… 
UPDATE: Markets un-suspended, now. Nigel Eccles does not know why the category editor did suspend that.
UPDATE: The HubDub category editor has published a comment, below.
- Exchanges & Markets
- Comments(9)
Market now un-suspended: http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market.....minee_1473
Not sure why the category editor suspended it.
As the US Political Category Editor at Hubdub I can answer that question. We decided last week when Barack Obama was choosing his VP candidate to suspend all Democratic VP markets at Midnight EDT, so there would be no wagers made on the markets after announcement was leaked. Since we settled markets based on the official announcement there would have been a delay between mainstream media leaking who they believed it was and the Obama official announcement. Since we had established that precendent it was announced on the comment boards yesterday and on select VP markets for the Republicans that all Republican VP markets would suspend at midnight last night.
This morning Nigel reopened one of the most popular VP markets as he mentioned above, and that market will stay open until an announcement is made.
The prediction markets should be settled just after the official announcement. I don’t see the reason to stop trading before that.
Well part of difficulties in settling markets is choosing what will and will not settle a market. If we use the Obama VP selection as an example. CNN and MSNBC were reporting a little after 1 am that Joe Biden was the choice according to their reports, but the Official announcement didn’t come out from Obama camp until 3 am. So if we allow markets to trade until the official announcement then all the markets would have been moved to 100%, and those users who were able to stay up and watch the news would have had an unfair advantage. One of the things to keep in mind is that prediction markets are predicting news, not reporting news. So how much predictive value should their be.
Our user base seemed very pleased with the decision we made with the Obama VP markets, and there seemed to be no discord among the users with closing these markets 12 hours before the planned announcement.
“those users who were able to stay up and watch the news would have had an unfair advantage.”
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Complete B.S.
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The HubDub traders should be treated as adults, not like kids.
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I want know to erase all the good things I wrote about HubDub, after I have read that. Completely insane.
Sorry if you took offense, I was just trying to explain some of the reasoning. We do the same thing with the DOW and NASDAQ markets where we close them before they close, so users do not pile on predictions into a market that is no longer predictive and is more about a sure thing. Figuring out when and why to suspend markets is an ongoing struggle. I look forward to your input.
I did not take offense. I understand you have a different point of view.
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My view is that you are treating traders like schoolboys and I don’t like that.
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I also don’t like that it is impossible to sell only a part of what was bought. A seller is compelled to sell anything he has. You should allow partial shorting.
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HubDub risks alienating the hard-core traders. NewsFutures is more satisfying, with regard to these 2 points.
[...] Chris F. Masse August 29th, 2008 - The prediction markets are suspended before the official announcement of the outcome. [...]
It is a bit ironic that betfair (an exchange where huge sums of real money are being traded) prefer to keep the markets open, offering punters the opportunity to fleece each other, while hubdub are doing the opposite, thereby showing how much they care about fairness and integrity on their platform. I can respect that.
Of course, betfair is in it for the money. And without proper regulation they can do whatever they want. Also, people got nowhere else to go.
Hubdub are not treating their customers like children Chris, but they should announce when they will close the market at least 12 hours ahead so that traders are provided with the opportunity to close their positions. Other than that, fk the traders.