PopSci’s PPX forum:

PopSciAdmin
06-20-2007, 02:43 PM
Prediction markets work when they operate like a stock market.
beebee is spot on. Even those traders who think they’re cleverly outwitting the market are in fact doing exactly what the market requires to produce accurate probability data.
Only when many players collude to game the system do markets behave unexpectedly, which is why securities fraud can land someone in jail, and illegally gaming PPX can result in your account being suspended! But that would never happen, right?
Thanks everyone for the interesting discussion.
-PopSciAdmin

PopSci’s PPX forum:

PPX Systems Admin
Fair warning folks, cheating will not be tolerated. You know who you are.
Manipulation, collusion, multiple accounts etc, I have been working with prediction markets for over 6 years and have seen it all. I have absolutely no problem assessing fines or banning accounts.
Play fair, win fair.
__________________
PPX Systems Admin

Chris Masse’s remarks:

#1. The “PopSci Admin” is bull-shitting. Prediction markets work best when they operate like event futures markets.

#2. The anonymous poster who signs as “PPX Systems Admin” is either Sean Dunbar (the Head of Technology at the Hollywood Stock Exchange, who has been with HSX for 6 years and 9 months) or Alexander Costakis (the Managing Director at the Hollywood Stock Exchange, who has been with HSX for 6 years and 3 months). It can’t be Amy Lamare, who has been with HSX for 8 years and 4 months.

—

LinkedIn profiles:

- Alexander Costakis (Managing Director of Hollywood Stock Exchange)

- Sean Dunbar (Head of Technology at Hollywood Stock Exchange)

- Amy Lamare (Hollywood Stock Exchange Manager)

—

Click here to read all the other Midas Oracle blog posts about Pop Sci’s PPX.

[...] With 25,000 hits a day, HSX is the Internet’s leading virtual market and a burgeoning source for big-studio market research. [...]

Hmmmm… The Midas Oracle .ORG server web stats says this:

Analyzed requests from Fri, Sep 15 2006 at 8:23 AM to Thu, May 10 2007 at 12:37 AM (236.68 days).
Figures in parentheses refer to the 7-day period ending May 10 2007 at 4:47 AM.

Successful requests: 4,058,317 (208,537)
Average successful requests per day: 17,147 (29,790)
Successful requests for pages: 1,340,229 (59,991)
Average successful requests for pages per day: 5,662 (8,570)
Failed requests: 12,009 (2)
Redirected requests: 71,241 (225)
Data transferred: 51.59 gigabytes (2.39 gigabytes)
Average data transferred per day: 223.20 megabytes (349.99 megabytes)

The “hits” or “requests” are not what you should look for. If you have many images on your webpages, sure you’ll have a high number of “hits”. The “pageviews” count is what will give you info on users’ behavior.

—

[...] But Anita Elberse, an assistant professor who teaches marketing at Harvard Business School, estimates that, on average, HSX closing prices come within 16 percent of box office receipts. [...]

Congrats to Alex Costakis and Amy Lamare (and the HSX traders).

—

[...] Recently, the site has started to tinker with its 10-year-old formula. Once limited to MovieStocks, users can now purchase “Hollywood Derivatives” to predict the success of their favorite World Cup soccer team, American Idol contestant or Academy Awards nominee. (In 2005, HSX users correctly guessed all eight Oscar winners.) The point, says Costakis, is to create a “testing ground” for future additions to the site, which could include full-time sports options and TV stocks. [...]

Looking forward to this.

—

Psstt… See what they say about the HSX leagues on the last page.

—

I have a suggestion for the Hollywood Stock Exchange. Why not running US presidential election prediction markets? After all, the HSX has tons of motivated traders. And the HSX did run non-movie prediction markets in the past: the 2003 California gubernatorial election, and the 2006 Word Cup of Soccer.

Question to Alex Costakis and Amy Lamare: Wouldn’t be a great marketing ploy, which would attract more media coverage to HSX?

Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX.com) Traders correctly picked 7 out of 8 Top Category Oscar Winners to continue its stellar record.
Los Angeles, California, February 26, 2007 -

Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX), announced a spectacular 88% success rate for picking this year’s Oscar winners. The world’s longest continuously operating commercial prediction market and popular online game once again proved the accuracy of virtual stock markets.

This year Traders hit 7 of 8 in predicting the winners in the top categories. Traders scored a perfect 100% in the Lead Acting, Directing, Writing and Best Picture fields continuing their outstanding trend in picking nominees and Award winners. Last year HSX Traders also hit the 7 out of 8 mark, and the year prior a perfect 8 out of 8 victory. This brings HSX’s three year cumulative average to 92%.

This year HSX added a fun feature to our Awards Options. Best Feature Animation was not a part of our NominOption® series, but debuted during the Awards Options. Traders were given the chance to predict which of the three nominated animated films would win Oscar gold. They went with the popular Cars, which was edged out last night by Happy Feet.

“When it comes to movies, the collective wisdom of Hollywood Stock Exchange traders is unmatched”, said Alex Costakis, Managing Director. “HSX Traders are savvy, entertainment consumers, with a keen eye for not only predicting Oscar winners, but also for estimating how well a movie will do in box office throughout the year. Think of it as a virtual focus group. The Hollywood Stock Exchange is a proven prediction market technology that empowers individuals to influence Hollywood by making their opinions known by actively participating in this dynamic trading environment”.

Since its establishment in 1996, HSX has registered over 1.6 million users. HSX offers consumers the opportunity to buy and sell virtual shares of films and actors. HSX also offers unique Trading opportunities surrounding special Award events and consistently beats most polls and industry pundits.

- HSX – Oscars Nominations Prediction Markets – Accuracy

- Oscars 2007 – TradeSports-InTrade – Bingo!

- Oscars 2007 – Hollywood Stock Exchange – Bingo!

- Debunking HSX Alex Costakis’ conspiracy theory

- Hollywood Stock Exchange’s Alex Costakis makes historical mistake, TOO.

—

Congrats to the two HSX co-founders (Max Keiser and Michael Burns) and congrats to the current managers (Alex Costakis and Amy Lamare), and all the other people at HSX.

One suggestion to Amy Lamare and the other people managing the HSX site: Why don’t you publish the entirety of your interesting spin output in your site feed (a.k.a. RSS feed)? Alex Costakis complained about ABC7 and their supposed flawed reporting. Well, since you have a large number of registered users, maybe you could inform them directly about the HSX performance for the 2007 Oscars. I’m a subscriber of the HSX site feed, and I haven’t seen your P.R. output there, yet. And why not a link to this P.R. output from the HSX frontpage?

If you google the sentence, “The Press release is dead” (with the quotes), you’ll find interesting ideas and suggestions pertaining to internet marketing.

Does anybody know why HSX’s Amy Lamare refused to chronicle Apocalypto? Retaliation against his anti-semitic rant? Other editorial choice? Lack of time?

Photos

#2. Real-money BetFair is the most successful UK-based prediction exchange (a.k.a. betting exchange). It has just bought out TimeForm, a source of facts and opinions on British horse racing.

CONCLUSION: To be popular, a prediction exchange should also be a content producer.

—

Psstt… Note something.

- HSX = movies.

- BetFair = horse racing, mainly. (And soccer, too. Will expand topics in the future, of course.)

After my third glass of Bordeaux, I could make the case that HSX and BetFair are two vertical prediction exchanges. It’s of course easier to provide vertical content than generalist content. Agree or disagree?

—

- HSX Amy Lamare on Casino Royale

- Casino Royale “security” at HSX

My Question:

Don’t you think that the future belongs to generalist prediction markets striking deals with vertical consultants? Kind of PredictionX + Rimdex?

Quote Of The Day:

“Predictive Markets work,” said Alex Costakis, senior vice president and managing director, Hollywood Stock Exchange®. “We have been applying this technique to answer market intelligence questions for the motion picture industry for the past ten years. Studio executives would be paralyzed without the insights that the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ provides. I have no doubt that the data storage industry will find the Storage Markets tool extremely useful.”