Check that CFM page for updates. And contact me so I can make additions to the list. (I’ll then re-publish that updated list on Midas Oracle.)

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• Michael Abramowicz – Michael B. Abramowicz – (Law School, George Washington University, Washington, D.C., U.S.A.) — Post Archives at Midas Oracle
• Bernd H. Ankenbrand – Bernd Ankenbrand – (Lecturer, Witten/Herdecke University, Germany, E.U.) — Post Archives at Midas Oracle
• James Annan – (Global Environment Modelling Research Program, Frontier Research Center for Global Change, Japan)
• Werner Antweiler – (UBC Election Stock Market, Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada)
• Kenneth J. Arrow – Kenneth Arrow – (Economics Department, Stanford University, California, U.S.A.)
• Tom W. Bell – Tom Bell – (Law School, Chapman University, California, U.S.A.) — Post Archives at Midas Oracle
• Joyce E. Berg – Joyce Berg – Profile – (Iowa Electronic Markets, Accounting, Henry B. Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa, Iowa, U.S.A.)
• Richard Borghesi – (Finance, Texas State University at San Marcos, Texas, U.S.A.) — Post Archives at Midas Oracle
• Kay-Yut Chen – (Information Services & Process Innovation Lab, HP Labs, HP, California, U.S.A.)
• Yiling Chen – (Micro-Economic and Social Systems, Yahoo! Research Labs, New York, U.S.A.) — Post Archives at Midas Oracle
• Eric Crampton – (Department of Economics, University of Canterbury, New Zealand) — Post Archives at Midas Oracle
• Ely Dahan – (Marketing, Anderson School, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.)
• Anita Elberse – (Marketing, Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Massachusetts, U.S.A.)
• Leslie R. Fine – Leslie Fine – (Information Dynamics Lab, HP Labs, California, U.S.A.)
• Gary William Flake – Gary W. Flake – Gary Flake – (MicroSoft, U.S.A.)
• Robert Forsythe – (Dean, College of Business Administration, University of South Florida, Florida, U.S.A.) — Previously: (Economics, Iowa Electronic Markets, Henry B. Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa, Iowa, U.S.A.)
• Lance Fortnow – Lance J. Fortnow – (Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, McCormick School of Engineering, Northwestern University, Illinois, U.S.A.)
• Keith Jacks Gamble – Keith Gamble – (Economics (University of California at Berkeley) – California, U.S.A. — Post Archives at Midas Oracle
• Michael Gorham – (IIT Center for Financial Markets, Stuart School of Business, Illinois Institute of Technology, Illinois, U.S.A.) — Previously: (CFTC)
• Thomas S. Gruca – Thomas Gruca – Profile – (Iowa Electronic Markets, Marketing, Henry B. Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa, Iowa, U.S.A.)
• Refet Gurkaynak – (Department of Economics, Bilkent University, Turkey)
• Friedrich August Von Hayek — R.I.P. — The market as an information aggregation tool: The Use of Knowledge in Society —
• Robert W. Hahn – Robert Hahn – (Executive Director, Reg-Markets Center, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C., U.S.A.) — Post Archives at Midas Oracle
• James D. Hamilton – James Hamilton – (Department of Economics, University of California at San Diego – California, U.S.A.) — Post Archives at Midas Oracle
• Robin Hanson – Robin D. Hanson – (Economics, James M. Buchanan Center, George Mason University, Virginia, U.S.A.) — Post Archives at Midas Oracle
• M. Todd Henderson – (Law School, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.)
• Chris Hibbert – (Software Architect, Zocalo Project Manager, California, U.S.A.) — Post Archives at Midas Oracle
• Charles Holt – Charles A. Holt – (Department of Economics, University of Virginia, Virginia, U.S.A.)
• Bernardo A. Huberman – Bernardo Huberman – (Social Computing Lab, HP Labs, California, U.S.A.)
• Frédéric Koessler – (Economics, Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, France, E.U.)
• Anthony M. Kwasnica – Anthony Kwasnica – (Business Economics, Department of Insurance and Real Estate, Smeal College of Business Administration, Penn State University, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.)
• Nicolas Lambert – (Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, California, U.S.A.)
• John O. Ledyard – John Ledyard – (Economics and and Social Sciences, Division of Humanity and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, California, U.S.A.)
• Andrew Leigh – (Economics, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Australia)
• Steven Levitt – Steve Levitt – Steven D. Levitt – (Economics, Director of the Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.)
• Saul Levmore – (Law School, University of Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.)
• Robert E. Litan – Robert Litan – (Vice President for Research and Policy, Kauffman Foundation, Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.A.)
• Thomas W. Malone – Thomas Malone – Tom Malone – (MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, Management, MIT Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts, U.S.A.)
• Charles F. Manski – Charles Manski – (College of Arts and Sciences, Norwestern University, Illinois, U.S.A.)
• Adam Meirowitz – (Department of Politics, Princeton University, New Jersey, U.S.A.)
• Paul Milgrom – (Department of Economics, Stanford University, California, U.S.A.)
• Tracy Mullen – (Information Sciences and Technology, Penn State University, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.)
• Forrest Nelson – Profile – (Iowa Electronic Markets, Economics, Henry B. Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa, Iowa, U.S.A.)
• George R. Neumann – George Neumann – Profile – (Iowa Electronic Markets, Economics, Henry B. Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa, Iowa, U.S.A.)
• Ryan Oprea – Profile – (Director of the LEEPS laboratory, Economics, University of California at Santa Cruz, California, U.S.A.)
• Gerhard Ortner – (University of Applied Sciences, Austria, E.U.)
• Marco Ottaviani – (Management and Strategy, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Illinois, U.S.A.) – Formerly: (Economics Department, London Business School, United Kingdom, E.U.) — Post Archives at Midas Oracle
• David Paton – (Industrial Economics, Business School, Nottingham University, United Kingdom, E.U.)
• David M. Pennock – David Pennock – (Principal Research Scientist, Micro-Economic and Social Systems, Yahoo! Research Labs, New York, U.S.A.) — Post Archives at Midas Oracle
• Charles R. Plott – Charles Plott – (Economics and and Social Sciences, Division of Humanity and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, California, U.S.A.)
• David Porter – (Economics and Finance, Chapman University, California, U.S.A.)
• Todd Proebsting – Todd A. Proebsting – (Microsoft & University of Arizona, U.S.A.)
• Russ Ray – (Finance, College of Business, University of Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.A.)
• Daniel Reeves – (Micro-Economic and Social Systems, Yahoo! Research Labs, New York, U.S.A.) — Post Archives at Midas Oracle
• Paul W. Rhode – Paul Rhode – (US Economic History, College of Management, The University of Arizona, Arizona, U.S.A.) – Formerly: (University of North Carolina, North Carolina, U.S.A.)
• Thomas A. Rietz – Thomas Rietz – Profile – (Iowa Electronic Markets, Finance, Henry B. Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa, Iowa, U.S.A.)
• Richard Roll – (University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.)
• Thomas W. Ross – Thomas Ross – (UBC Election Stock Market, Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada)
• Rahul Sami – (School of Information, University of Michigan, Michigan, U.S.A.)
• Sam L. Savage – Sam Savage – (Consulting Professor, Stanford U., California, U.S.A.) — Post Archives at Midas Oracle
• Thomas C. Schelling – Thomas Schelling – (Economics, School of Public Affair, University of Maryland, Maryland, U.S.A.)
• Emile Servan-Schreiber – (NewsFutures, New York City, New York, U.S.A. & Paris, France, E.U.) — Post Archives at Midas Oracle
• Robert J. Shiller – Robert Shiller – Profile – (Economics, Yale University, Connecticut, U.S.A.)
• Bernd Skiera – (Electronic Commerce, Goethe University, Germany, E.U.)
• Vernon L. Smith – Vernon Smith – (Economics, Economic Science Institute, Chapman University, California, U.S.A.)
• Erik Snowberg – (Stanford University, California, U.S.A.) — Soon at CalTech
• Peter Norman Sorensen – (Finance, Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, E.U.)
• Martin Spann – (Marketing and Innovation, University of Passau, Germany, E.U.)
• Koleman Strumpf – Koleman S. Strumpf – (Economics, School of Business, University of Kansas, Kansas, U.S.A.) – Formerly: University of North Carolina, North Carolina, U.S.A.) — Post Archives at Midas Oracle
• Cass Sunstein – Cass R. Sunstein – (Law School, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.)
• James Surowiecki – (The Wisdom Of Crowds) – (New York, U.S.A.)
• Paul C. Tetlock – Paul Tetlock – (Finance, Business School, University of Texas at Austin, Texas, U.S.A.) — Post Archives at Midas Oracle
• Philip Tetlock – Philip E. Tetlock – (Leadership, University of California at Berkeley, California, U.S.A.)
• Hal R. Varian – Hal Varian – (Chief Economist, Google, California, U.S.A.) — Formerly: (Haas School of Business, Department of Economics, University of California at Berkeley, California, U.S.A.)
• Dorina Tila – (Economics, George Mason University, Virginia, U.S.A.)
• Leighton Vaughan-Williams – (Economics and Finance, Business School, Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom, E.U.)
• Michael Wellman – Michael P. Wellman – (Computer Science and Engineering, University of Michigan, Michigan, U.S.A.)
• Justin Wolfers – Justin J. Wolfers – (Business and Public Policy, Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.) — Post Archives at Midas Oracle
• Eric Zitzewitz – Eric W. Zitzewitz – (Economics, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts, USA) – Formerly: (Stanford University, California, U.S.A.) — Post Archives at Midas Oracle

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Actress Eva Longoria, of ABC TV’s show Desparate Housewives, reportedly is concerned about the show’s crew, “that will have a terrible holiday season because there’s no resolution.” She added, “I care about people losing their homes, I care about my hair and makeup artists who can’t make ends meet.”

Ms. Longoria raises an important point. While writers are striking for, among other things, a slice of new media revenue streams, it isn’t just writers and producers that have a stake in the outcome.

A good forecast of the duration of the strike would have economic value — the writers would know better how to budget their savings over the next few months (weeks? days?), producers could reorganize production schedules (or not), and networks could decide how much more of their spring schedule they’ll be giving over to reality programming (too much, but the programs are cheap). Advertisers, too, might want to know when the current crop of new shows will dry up. And, of course, the hair and makeup artists and all the rest of the people that help keep the film and TV industries running.

Tax collectors in Los Angeles county also will be concerned. A Los Angeles Times news story reported the 1988 strike cost the entertainment industry some $500 million, and that means fewer taxes collected in and around Hollywood. In Forbes, Southern Cal business professor Mark Young extrapolates from a 2001 Milken Institute study to estimate that a five-month strike now could cost the Los Angeles area nearly $8 billion. Young notes that in 1988, the strike may have cost networks 9 percent in lost viewership. With more options for today’s viewers, the drop off from a long strike could be more dramatic.

So a good forecast would be handy. I’ve set up a play-money prediction market at Inkling asking, “How long will the Writers Guild of America strike last?” The early trading favors a short strike, with prices suggesting about a 35 percent chance of less than a month (adding the one week price to the one month price).

I’m not sure whether a prediction market can do a good job here. We have negotiations between two committees, the outcome of which will be voted upon by the WGA membership. Is this like the “olympic site selection” issue, or resignation markets, which have been asserted to not be good topics?

But, of course, the question is whether prediction markets do better than the alternatives. So far the alternative seems to be random speculation by random people, and prediction markets probably are better than that. What other forecasts are out there?

[This post is a somewhat revised version of a post previously up at Knowledge Problem.]

Hollywood Ending – Trader Daily – October 4, 2007 – by Robert LaFranco

A decade ago, a Wall Street trader and an L.A. dealmaker united to remake the movie industry in the image of the markets. They had capital, ambition, securities-industry savvy and an American public captivated by money and celebrity. So whatever became of the Hollywood Stock Exchange?

In late March 2000, Max Keiser and Michael Burns were tucked away in the VIP lounge of Hollywood’s House of Blues, gleefully presiding over one of the town’s hottest Oscar parties. The duo surveyed the scene: a throng of industry insiders, journalists, style-savvy party crashers, even Ron Jeremy, all descending on a buffet table brimming with enough gourmet fare to feed a small former Soviet republic. Spinning tunes was Moby — among the world’s best-known DJs at the time — while Earth, Wind & Fire prepared for their headline set. Outside, a crowd of wannabes loitered anxiously around the velvet ropes, angling for a way to get in.

It was a heady time for Keiser and Burns, two former finance whiz kids who five years earlier had teamed up to start the Hollywood Stock Exchange. Their dot-com-era high flyer was going to change the movie business by revolutionizing the way movies were paid for — giving independent filmmakers a way to raise money online from the public and other investors. The way they saw it, soon anybody with a credit card and a computer could become the next Robert Evans.

Already, Keiser was a regular on Entertainment Tonight and The Howard Stern Show. Two months earlier, the HSX had proven the surprise hit of the Sundance Film Festival — publicity-wise, anyway — as Keiser and Burns’s rented cafe drew hefty crowds who came for free cappuccino and a chance to check their e-mail. But the best buzz had come a few weeks later, when the HSX unveiled an enormous, colorful ticker in the heart of West Hollywood, offering live updates of “star stock” and “movie bond” prices scrolling along the side of a 7,000-square-foot piece of prime real estate like a newfangled companion to the Hollywood sign.

“We were going to change the way Hollywood worked,” says Keiser today. “It was an industry ready for change.”

But like many rising stars in Tinseltown, Keiser and Burns — and the exchange they created — would eventually flicker and dim. Not long after Oscar night 2000, the already buckling stock market cratered with sickening ferocity and sank into a three-year tailspin. For HSX, it was the moment in the movie when the ship hits the iceberg.

Today the founders and original investors in the Hollywood Stock Exchange are scattered around the globe with little to show for their efforts but a curious line item on their résumés. It’s likely small solace to them that hedge funds and Hollywood are now converging like at no time in history — at least proving that their notion of an impending sea change in the way movies are financed was somewhat prescient. And it’s probably salt in their wounds to know that in June, Dallas Mavericks owners Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner launched their own Hollywood financing firm — in their case, for buying out and bundling profit-sharing deals. For their part, Keiser and Burns remain the hapless protagonists of that rarest of Hollywood productions: a decade-long epic without a happy ending. And for every trader who has ever longed to close his positions, take his profits and stumble from the trading floor in pursuit of his dreams, theirs might be a reminder that not all markets are meant to be made.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In 1995, Max Keiser, a 35-year-old former stockbroker and one of Shearson Lehman’s biggest options producers, had come to Hollywood to work on a movie project that his old buddy Alec Baldwin had gotten placed at Miramax. Michael Burns, an investment banker with Prudential Securities in Los Angeles, was a 37-year-old with strong ties to the movie industry. Burns and Keiser met while working together at Shearson Lehman in the ’80s, but in 1990 went their separate ways, Keiser to Paris to live off his Wall Street gains. One day, while sitting in a Hollywood cafe called Barney’s Beanery, Burns and Keiser alighted upon the idea for an exchange in entertainment futures. Perhaps it was the high-octane espresso talking, but the way they saw it, their notion was revolutionary. The inspiration had come to them while thumbing through an industry trade publication, where they had seen a printed weekend box-office tally.

“It looked just like the listings for the S&P 500,” Keiser says. “I suddenly looked at the movie industry like Michael Milken viewed the bond market. The original business plan of HSX was an exchange for predictive products that would lead to re-monetizing the industry and breaking up the Hollywood cartel. Using this platform we would allow many, many, many more people to have access to funds.”

Based on his knowledge of the NYSE, Keiser began mapping out an exchange. He mimicked the double-action trading environment of a real exchange, setting up the whole thing in a virtual environment. He established a currency and treasury function, a virtual banking system, a virtual interest-rate function and other virtual back-end trading functions that he would eventually patent as the Virtual Specialist. Then he and Burns set about seeking approval to operate as an exchange that could democratize the insular movie business.

There was, however, just one little problem. The lack of transparency in Hollywood studio accounting practices made actual deliverables an impossible strategy to execute. Meanwhile, their business plan was hamstrung by Blue Sky laws and their inability to secure the CFTC’s blessing. So Burns came up with a new idea: If they pitched the product as a game and developed the whole thing as a virtual economy, they would avoid the regulations — and still have a robust trading environment that could someday be used as a real-money movie-business exchange. Burns invested $400,000 and sent Keiser to the developers at Cambridge Technology Ventures, who finessed and expanded it, turning it into a robust fantasy market. The result was a completely self-sufficient platform for the creation of valuable predictive data but, sadly for users, completely useless wealth.

Then again, considering that this was the mid-’90s, that seemed as good an idea as any.

“When we saw that Blue Sky rules made it difficult to accomplish the trading aspect of it, we should’ve spent more time talking up the community aspect or even building it up as a MySpace-esque environment,” Burns says. Instead, what the company began leaning toward was a consumer portal that would be not just an advertising vehicle but a source of data as well. Movie studios, it should be noted, conduct an enormous amount of market research before dropping $50 million on a movie, and the kind of data HSX was collecting was a natural fit for that purpose: Which demographic groups are buying into which movies and which stars? What is the public interest in horror films? How much buzz is there about the new Judd Apatow flick?

Prediction markets, based on the premise that mob wisdom rules, place trust in groupthink [???] over the postulates of individual experts — and in this arena, HSX would prove to be a resounding success. Since 1998, HSX traders have chosen the top eight Academy Award category winners with 85 percent accuracy. Just this past February, a few days before it opened in theaters around the county, the HSX stock price of Eddie Murphy’s Norbit was climbing through the 70s, while Hannibal Rising was hovering in the 30s. Using a simple formula known to the industry (divide the HSX price by 2.5 and multiply by 1 million), it has been consistently proved possible to predict a film’s opening-weekend box office with a fair degree of precision. (A 2006 Harvard Business School study found HSX to be a relatively accurate online prediction market, finding its opening-weekend forecasts to be on target 77 percent of the time.) According to HSX, then, Norbit would open well north of $24 million and Hannibal at $12 million. Indeed, Norbit — despite withering, often vicious reviews — grossed $34 million and Hannibal $13 million.

Which, for what it’s worth, is a neat trick. But what, exactly, is it worth?

It’s an open secret that for the past few decades, Hollywood studios have used a trio of research companies — Nielsen National Research Group, Online Testing Exchange and MarketCast — to decide everything from cast mix and storylines to marketing strategies and release dates. Thus, while the HSX was initially greeted with interest, it quickly devolved into something of an online sideshow to the research world’s Big Three. The industry was logging on, but getting anyone to pay for the data was a struggle.

Complicating matters, perhaps surprisingly, was the site’s high visibility. By 1999, as dot-com hysteria dominated the cultural landscape, revolutionary hubris was running rampant and HSX was, in some ways, taunting the movie industry. Keiser began appearing on Entertainment Tonight offering weekly box-office predictions based on HSX trading performance. He was a frequent pundit on cable news programs and a thorn in the side of the studios who did not much appreciate the fact that this fast-talking stockbroker was tainting the public perception of their movies by loudly declaiming their prospects before they were even released. At one point, Keiser says, studios threatened to boycott ET; Keiser was pulled off the air. Still, Web traffic to HSX was increasing rapidly, and it wasn’t long before more than 70 investors — including Citigroup, NBC, Travelers Insurance, Keystone Venture Capital and, of all things, the Scandinavian Broadcast Service — had ponied up some $40 million to get a piece of HSX. And although Keiser and Burns were still enamored of the notion of building a real futures exchange, their new investors dismissed the idea outright; they were, instead, eyeing an IPO. HSX built up a staff of about 100, more than a third of them in public relations and marketing, and the company went to great lengths to generate awareness, drive traffic and boost ad dollars — the favored revenue model of the day.

“I was outvoted,” Keiser grumbles today. “It was gut-wrenching. The board bailed on me and my vision.”

Regardless, those were the good times. HSX moved into a former Herb Ritts Gallery office in West Hollywood that it thoroughly revamped. Andy Kaplan, a top Sony television executive, was installed as CEO. They hooked up that giant ticker. They threw lavish million-dollar parties, became fixtures at film festivals and blew still more millions on advertising. Asked what the company spent its $40 million on that could not be considered promotion, Keiser, who still holds onto his dream of someday democratizing media finance, shrugs: “Nothing I can think of.”

By then HSX was losing about $700,000 a month. By mid-2000, it had burned through $23 million in VC funding raised the previous year. And after the market crash eliminated the IPO exit strategy, HSX investors tried a back-door exit, linking up with a publicly traded pink-sheet company called Predict-It, another struggling fantasy market. On paper, the two companies could together claim revenue of about $10 million, but that figure was window dressing at best. Not long after plans for the pending merger were filed with regulators, Keiser and Burns checked out of the deal. Subsequently, the company’s 70 investors also backed out, refusing to put up more money to float the venture.

“Everyone was struggling, and we were all trying to climb onto something that would keep us afloat,” says former Predict-It CEO Andrew Merkatz. He has since formed a merchant banking firm, CountryRoad Capital. “Two drowning bodies grabbing onto each other does not make for a good ending.”

Then suddenly, in May 2001, with the Scandinavian Broadcast Service in control of the assets and apparently willing to write the last check, Cantor Fitzgerald stepped in to acquire the company.

“We had launched a sports-spread betting program in 2001 and had interest in diversifying what we offered, and they were cheap and not making money,” says Paul Galbraith, a spokesman for the Cantor Index in London. “But in the end, we never found a market for movie spreads in the U.K. With movies, there were just a couple of people who really knew what they were doing, and they had a lot more time on their hands for the entertainment futures market than our market makers did.”

Slight, presumably, intended.

To be fair, today’s HSX is, if nothing else, highly liquid for a prediction market. Since its inception 12 years ago, the exchange has created 1.7 million trading accounts and developed a sizable, cultlike following among movie fans. On an average day, 20,000 traders on the HSX will swap 2.5 billion shares in more than 40,000 trades, volume that dwarfs rival markets such as the Iowa Electronics Market and HedgeStreet. Compared to In-Trade, an Irish prediction exchange that offers markets in politics, commodities and other products, HSX is the NYSE: In seven years, In-Trade has created just 65,000 accounts, 12,000 of them active.

Still, there is one key difference that separates HSX from its competitors’ sites: money. Traders on the Iowa Exchange, In-Trade and HedgeStreet are all investing with actual currency. At HSX, the $9.9 billion in “Hollywood Dollars” accumulated by the current leader are about as valuable as a photocopy of a dollar bill. Meanwhile, the number of active accounts at HSX.com has dropped to 650,000, an audience too small for Nielsen Net Media to bother tracking.

Keiser (who voted his 10 million shares “no” to the sale) now insists that Cantor has not made good on the deal — which the firm made using eSpeed stock — leaving the original owners with nothing. He estimates the company has since spent close to $20 million developing the exchange software he created, but has not yet taken advantage of the asset the way everyone expected it to. A Cantor spokesman declined to comment on Keiser’s allegations.

The company does finally appear to be building on its prediction-market foothold: Earlier this year, it hired Andy Wing, formerly a Nielsen executive, to run a new division, Cantor Entertainment, with HSX as its centerpiece. Might HSX finally achieve legal exchange status? Consider that it took HedgeStreet two years to win its legal-exchange designation, then another 18 months to get it off the ground. Or that in 2005, In-Trade was fined and placed under tight restrictions regarding its U.S. activities, while the Iowa Exchange, a nonprofit and largely academic outfit, has been granted a “no action” waiver from the CFTC so it can operate in the U.S. without penalty.

As for the founders? Michael Burns, it is safe to say, landed on his feet. Having spent a decade brokering broadcast deals as an investment banker for Prudential Securities’ Los Angeles office, Burns had maintained strong ties with the entertainment business and was helping to build the independent studio Lions Gate Entertainment even as he was working on the HSX venture. Today, Burns is Lions Gate’s CEO.

Keiser, meanwhile, is still relishing his role as a rebel. Leaving both Wall Street and Hollywood in the dust, he spends most of his time in Paris producing films for the Al-Jazeera news network and heading up his latest venture, Kinooga.com. Kinooga, as Keiser explains, is the offspring of his original idea, providing a venue for individual buyers to finance independent media projects. “We’re creating a funding mechanism for independent producers to compete with the entrenched entertainment cartel,” he says. “This is an unregulated piece of business that gives many, many, many more people access to funds.”

As for Keiser and Burns’s original dream, that online Hollywood market that would turn John Q. Public into a mouse-wielding movie mogul? Consider that based on the $1 commissions now being earned by HedgeStreet, a trading business even merely the size of HSX today would generate $30 million a year in revenue. Cantor’s own spread-betting business in the U.K. is now earning $70 million in annual revenue, according to Galbraith. “Any way you slice it, the trading business far outstrips selling research,” Burns says. “I’d be very surprised if a futures exchange is not the business Cantor wants to get into. It just doesn’t make sense otherwise.”

This final scene, it seems, has yet to be written — for both the future of online futures markets and one trader’s crazy dream that simply refuses to die.

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Note: I have permission from the publisher to re-publish this news article. Thanks to Trader Daily. (Contact me.)

The original news article: Trader Daily ($$$)

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NEXT: Cantor Exchange

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—

Take a look at the blogroll of the NewsFutures blog, which cites everybody but BetFair:

Recent Posts

UC Riverside’s eLab eXchange : featuring Competitive Forecasting and Idea Pageants
Demise of a Sarko Killer
Results of the Dutch Political Stock Market
Los Angeles conference on collective intelligence networks
Washington DC conference on prediction markets

Blogroll

Midas Oracle
Odd Head
Overcoming Bias

Markets Powered By NewsFutures

Davos Global Risks
eLab eXchange
NewsFutures Exchange
Yahoo! Tech Buzz Game

NewsFutures

Company Website
RSS FEED

Other Public Prediction Markets of Note

Hollywood Stock Exchange
Intrade
Iowa Electronic Markets

Frankly, I do believe that BetFair, the world’s #1 betting exchange, is “of note”, because of its great liquidity.

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Now, seriously, let’s re-read Mike Giberson’s take:

BetFair gives every impression of being a success at sports betting, but sports betting generally doesn’t generate a lot of U.S. press unless corruption of some sort is involved. (And, by the way, BetFair was mentioned in U.S. media in conjunction with the ATP match-fixing suspicions.)

Does BetFair have a Ron Paul contract? I can’t find the political markets on www.betfair.com. Ah, click on “BetFair Sports” scroll down through the list of “All Markets”, and there lies “Politics” between “Rugby League” and “Poker.” Select “USA,” select “Republican candidates.” Aha! There he is at “24” in decimal odds (or, alternately, at 23/1 standard odds). A quick calculation indicates an implied 4.1 percent chance of receiving the GOP nomination.

I suspect American reporters (1) find it easier to locate the American political markets on Intrade, and (2) find prices directly interpretable as probabilities easier to report.

Also, the charts are hard to find (hidden as a link attached to the name, but the name is just black text against a white background and gives no indication that a chart and other information is available by clicking the name). If a reporter finds the market, clicks on the hidden link, and clicks the “Inverse Axis” box under the chart, then finally the reporter gets an easy-to-interpret implied probability chart.

While BetFair obviously works for experienced bettors, inexperienced visitors are given little help in discovering information that readily feeds into news stories. If BetFair wants the free publicity, it will need to be easier for reporters to get what they want.

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New York Times – Anonymous Editorial:

[...] The Bush team was so busy in 2001 trying to upend America’s global relationships according to a neo-conservative agenda that the then national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, did not see any urgency in reports that Al Qaeda was determined to strike in the United States. Mr. Tenet later helped hype the “slam dunk” intelligence that Mr. Bush used to justify diverting the military from the war of necessity against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan to the war of choice in Iraq. [...]

Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US. = the CIA memo (dated August 6, 2001) to the US President George W. Bush.

Transcript:

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and “bring the fighting to America.”

After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a — – service.

An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told – - service at the same time that bin Laden was planning to exploit the operative’s access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike.

The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of bin Laden’s first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the U.S.

Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that in —, Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own U.S. attack.

Ressam says bin Laden was aware of the Los Angeles operation. Although Bin Laden has not succeeded, his attacks against the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Laden associates surveyed our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.

Al Qaeda members — including some who are U.S. citizens — have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks.

Two al-Qaeda members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our embassies in East Africa were U.S. citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.

A clandestine source said in 1998 that a bin Laden cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a —- service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group or bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.

WORLD-WIDE WEB EXCLUSIVE. — PLEASE, CREDIT “MIDAS ORACLE” FOR THE SCOOP. — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

—

Christian Hellmers’ profile at LinkedIn:

Christian Hellmers
Director of US Business Development, Betfair
Greater San Diego Area

Current
* Director of US Business Development at Betfair Limited

Past
* Manager, International Retail Strategy at DivX Networks, Inc.
* Consultant at HP Authority
* Business Development Manager at Scour, Inc.

Education
* University of California, Los Angeles

Industry:
Internet

Specialties:
Entrepreneurship, gambling, Internet strategy, horse racing, internet community, passion

Experience

Director of US Business Development
Betfair Limited
(Privately Held; 501-1000 employees; Internet industry)
August 2004 – Present (2 years 10 months)

Manager, International Retail Strategy
DivX Networks, Inc.
(Internet industry)
October 2003 – January 2005 (1 year 4 months)

Consultant
HP Authority
(Internet industry)
April 2001 – October 2003 (2 years 7 months)

Business Development Manager
Scour, Inc.
(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Internet industry)
May 1999 – April 2001 (2 years)

Education
University of California, Los Angeles
BS, CEE Engineering, 1995 – 1999
Activities and Societies: President IFC

Great. The competition is looming.

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.

Austin – Boston – Chicago – Houston – London – Los Angeles – New York City – Paris – Philadelphia – San Francisco – Shangai – Seattle – Toronto – Washington D.C. -

June 2006:
Hollywood Stock Exchange launches the Sports Stock Exchange® with special securities covering the 2006 FIFA World Cup.

April 2006:
HSX Research wins contract for building Storage Markets, an innovative prediction market platform providing insight into the data storage industry.

January 2006:
HSX Research introduces Long Lead Box Office Forecasts, a report series providing projections of box office receipts for individual film titles a full six months prior to release.

October 2005:
Black Entertainment Television (BET) selects Hollywood Stock Exchange for development of The Ultimate Hustler Xchange, an online trading game associated with the Ulitmate Hustler reality TV show.

June 2005:
Hollywood Stock Exchange formally launches Virtual Specialistâ„¢, a white label prediction market solution that enables companies to leverage the power of HSX’ patented market-maker technology.

October 2004:
HSX provides The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper, share price information. The Globe will now feature HSX share prices for new releases in its Friday film section on a regular basis.

March 2004:
Hollywood Stock Exchange introduces TVStockâ„¢ as a recurring trading option on the Exchange.

December 2003:
IMX presented to the AFI Enhanced TV (eTV) Workshop as an AFI awarded leading-edge interactive television concept.

May 2003:
The Hollywood Stock Exchange crosses the one million mark in registered traders.

January 2003:
A live IMX television show, supporting the new music market, begins airing weekdays on FUSE Networks.

December 2002:
HSX launches IMX, the Interactive Music Exchange, a newly designed Virtual SpecialistTM ASP music market licensed to FUSE Networks (formerly muchmusic usa).

October 2002:
Alexander Costakis is appointed the new Managing Director of Hollywood Stock Exchange.

March 2002:
HSX secures sale of its research product to legendary motion picture studio, MGM.

May 2001:
Cantor Fitzgerald L.P., a leading financial services provider, acquires the Hollywood Stock Exchange.

March 2001:
HSX launches HSX Research (www.hsxresearch.com), a subscription-based market research application which strives to become a leading provider of information to the entertainment research community.

January 2001:
Alexander Costakis joins the Hollywood Stock Exchange as Vice President of Sales. [see * just below]

October 2000:
Launched Virtual Producer (www.virtualproducer.com), an immersive online experience that allows consumers to participate in every aspect of the production of a film.

June 2000:
Deal signed with Pacific Century CyberWorks’ (Now.com) to create content based on HSX Movies Market®.

May 2000:
Daily Web show, Buy, Sell or Hold, launched on HSX.TV.

March 2000:
O2K (Oscar 2000) at House of Blues featuring Moby and Earth Wind.

September 1999:
Patent received for Virtual Specialist Technology.

July 1999:
Weekly radio show launched on 97.1 FM in Los Angeles.

June 1999:
Music Market® launched in NYC at Jupiter Plug.In Conference.

March 1999:
Oscar Party at House of Blues featuring Beck and Crystal Method.

April 1996:
The Hollywood Stock Exchange is established. [*]

[*] The Hollywod Stock Exchange was founded on April 12, 1996, by Max Keiser and Michael Burns. I hate when an organization deletes the names of its founders —it’s pitiful.

(Max Keiser lives now in the South of France.)

Previous: Why the Hollywood Stock Exchange was sold to Cantor Fitzerald. – An insider’s account. + Two Tipping Points for Inkling Markets and Market Scoring Rule — CORRECTION

Psstt… The HSX Research website has been revamped. Their webpage on prediction markets:

HSX is the longest continuously running Prediction Market in existence. [*] Prediction markets are virtual stock exchanges that operate using many of the same principles as real stock markets. In a Prediction Market traders come to buy and sell shares to express their expectations of how a product or service will perform in the real world. The stock prices found on a Prediction Market quite often foretell outcomes better than leading experts in the given field. This remarkable success has garnered attention from academics and the media. [**]

Prediction Markets aggregate the knowledge of a group. When a company is looking to forecast their future sales, or industry trends, they can use this powerful tool to accurately and anonymously gauge opinions. This last point is important. Our clients have found that Prediction Markets provide more accurate results than traditional employee polling because they are a forum removed from office politics. In a sense, Prediction Markets are the modern, scientific version of the suggestion box.

A Prediction Market can be empolyed in virtually any research or commercial application, and the end-user group can range from the general public to subject-matter experts. [...]

[*] Is HSX the “longest continuously operating prediction market”??? – REDUX — The reality check is that the longest continuously running [***] prediction exchange in existence is the Foresight Exchange (then named “Idea Futures”), which was co-founded in 1994 by Ken Kittlitz (and godfathered by professor Robin Hanson).

[***] Which excludes the Iowa Electronic Markets, launched internally in 1998 and on the Web in the mid-nineties, but which was not “continous”, if I understand well.

What’s funny is that, five minutes ago, Alex Costakis blamed (rightfully) Adam Siegel of Inkling Markets ABC7 for a historical mistake he made while being interviewed on camera, a day he was ill. Maybe Alex Costakis could put his own house in order before blaming (rightfully) a young competitor of him a media that cited a young competitor of him. See: Does Inkling CEO Adam Siegel deserve capital punishment, really!??

[**] Our Barry Ritholtz begs to differ: Misunderstanding Prediction Market Failures

Previous: Email Interview: Ken Kittlitz

—

Addendum: Letter from HSX’s Alex Costakis…

[...] Just to be sure, my comments were entirely addressed to KGO ABC7 fault and their writing, producing and editorial staff’s lack in conducting background before reporting in written form and in broadcast. I made absolutely no comment about a competitor.

Media, of which you are a part of, has a special and unique role to insure accuracy, triangulation of sources and verification of background are especially important. I would encourage you to read my comments about KGO ABC7′s reporting before inaccurately reporting that I “blamed” a young competitor. [...]

—

[...] [M]y commentary is regarding that very reputable station, KGO ABC7, not having done standard background before printing a story or airing a scheduled interview. This is very a standard procedure to insure reporting integrity.

Precision: I had read the ABC7 story and Alex Costakis’ dual comment. It’s true that Alex Costakis’ remark is directed at ABC7. However, as everyone can see clearly in the ABC7 story, nowhere does this media claim that their prediction exchange is “a first”, as the HSX executive claims. As I reported in my previous story, it’s the Inkling CEO who appears to make the historical mistake:

Adam Siegel: “For the first time really, the regular public is going to be exposed to this kind of technology, and really be able to participate in something like this.”

As I said in my previous story, if Inkling Markets CEO Adam Siegel makes here reference to Robin Hanson’s Market Scoring Rule (and I would add today, “AND to the concept of user-created prediction markets”), then, yes, Adam Siegel does make a truthful statement, in my view. (Washington Stock Exchange also uses MSR, but does not have any user-created contract technology.)

TAKEAWAY: Literally, Chris Masse was wrong to say that Alex Costakis “blamed” Adam Siegel —the HSX executive indeed blamed the media (ABC7) for something that his young competitor actually said in front of a TV camera, a day he was ill. I suppose that Alex Costakis wanted ABC7 to add a paragraph giving historical credit to the Hollywood Stock Exchange. But my second look at the Adam Siegel statement (as I hinted in my previous story) can be understood as a veiled (because of cuts?) reference to two Inkling-enabled technologies: their innovative MSR mechanism design and their user-created contract capability.

Addendum #2: Letter from HSX’s Alex Costakis…

Please note, I don’t think I mentioned anything about KGO ABC7 claiming that anyone’s prediction market is ‘a first’.

“…nowhere does this media claim that their prediction exchange is “a first”…”

Rather, I was referring to KGO ABC7 gathering proper background for verification of information prior to publishing a written story, or airing a scheduled interview. Doing this type of background enables a reporter to ask questions such as “well, what about… XYZ….?”. Or, in a written article, adding a line or two of historical perspective. Nevertheless, thanks again for printing the correction – I hope KGO ABC7 sharpens up their reporting in the future.

Yeah, but the ABC7 story was more like an announcement for a new co-branded prediction exchange —not really a big picture story on all the prediction market scene. There are many news articles of this type in the New York Times or in the Wall Street Journal. Sometimes, the jounalos will put the highlight on one brand or one organization, and if the story is very short, they won’t bother writing a historical paragraph.

Anyway. Sunday is Oscar time!!!! And who says “the Oscars” says… the Hollywood Stock Exchange!!!!

Addendum: I regretted that the names of the two HSX founders (Max Keiser and Michael Burns) were not clearly spelled out on the HSX website. Well, here’s from HSX’s Alex Costakis:

I just saw your post about HSX nomination forecast accuracy. Chris, good one. But first I think the congratulations really should be directed to our traders. It’s their collective wisdom that generates our predictions. HSX is the facilitator, they are the brain power. And, beyond that, your point is well taken. The visionary founders of this innovative website should be listed. We will correct that. Happy Oscar Night.

FANTASTIC. We should reward entrepreneurs for wealth and job creation.

See: HSX – Oscars Nominations Prediction Markets – Accuracy