Better than sex.

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A Democrat will be elected President in 2008.

© NewsFutures

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Plus, it’s easy to embed their dynamic charts. It works like a charm.

NewsFutures = awesome.

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Emile is too French, but he is smart, and his prediction exchange is working fine.

Event derivative trading as it should be.

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A pity Emile is impermeable to MSR.

It would have been a great addition.

I forgot to say he is stubborn.

Yeah, he is too French and too stubborn.

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How can I do that on HubDub? Thanks.

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UPDATE: Jed Christiansen gives me the explainer in the comment, below. Thanks. It worked fine. I am now negative on this prediction.

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InTrade PDA interface

TradeSports PDA interface

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You can trade on BetFair via BlackBerry:

1. By downloading Betfair Mobile, a Java application available with versions specific to the most popular mobile phones and PDAs;
2. By using your device’s browser, connected to a lighter version of the exchange interface (BetFair Lite).

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SCOOP: BetFair do process more than 100,000 trades each week from these two channels.

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Jason Ruspini (“The Brain”) has established himself as one of the experts in the field of prediction markets. Listen up.

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1-2) These markets could have insider trading restrictions and forced settlement w/ new contract set.
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3-4) The CFTC/NFA could monitor a “large trader” list and have special reporting requirements for them. If trading seemed unreasonable given the objective outlook for a candidate, they could begin an investigation.
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5) Don’t void or unwind the market, just settle the contracts at the price immediately before the event and then start a new set of contracts as soon as possible.
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The only problem there is what happens when a price manipulation precedes an event such that the manipulated outcome locks-in the “manipulated” prices. The arrangements in 3-4) would go a long way towards addressing that scenario. Failing that, contracts could be worded in such a way to allow for freezing funds and unwinding trades in that sort of situation. Also, it would be difficult for a trader to set-off a feedback loop in a liquid binary market even if they were very large.

Signed: Deep Throat

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Editor’s Note: Here’s a new screen shot, taken this Saturday early morning (US Easter: 2:50 am).

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Jason Ruspini:

Actually it’s working fine. This means the same trader has a bid and offer at the same price. Otherwise traders would be able to manufacture bogus volume by trading with themselves.

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1. The navigation is easy —see the menu on the left-side sidebar.
2. I encountered only one 404.
3. They are using Movable Type, and not WordPress, alas.
4. The list of posts is comprehensive.
5. They could have integrated their events with Google Calendar —just like the BetFair FireFox add-on does.
6. The only bit of criticism I’d make is that their betting “knowledge”, which they want to “educate” their traders with, is not based on economic science. I think the next revolution in betting is science-based betting knowledge and science-based betting tips. That’ll happen outside of BetFair, I guess.

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Both InTrade and NewsFutures are in the process of overhauling their website. We’ll see within the next weeks what they have to offer.

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SALIENT VIRILITY REGAINED, BRITISH HONOR RESTORED, QUEEN ESCAPES AFFRONT: Astute and resourceful BetFair SEO expert has managed to put one of their sub-sites ahead of Midas Oracle in Google Web Search results.

[Nick Garner]

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BetFair’s future bet-matching logic:

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It simply beggars belief that people can have had matched bets removed from their account when nothing has gone wrong. Will there be a new department to judge the fairness of the [BetFair Stating Prices] returned in every race every day? What is unfair? Under the official SP? Or 20 % under?… or 30 , 40, 50 % under? Surely a bet that is matched is sacrosanct unless something has gone wrong, like a late suspension. Why do people have to email in to have their accounts adjusted back to the right amount? Surely it should be automatic.

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Cited by the Irishman, who didn’t publish the deep link —shame on him over 3 generations.

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Previously: BetFair Starting Price + Grand National fiasco

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Speaking of the Grand National fiasco, I think that the solution is not simply calling in more short-sellers (“layers”). Maybe BetFair should invent a reverse SP system, aiming at attracting the unsophisticated short-sellers (“layers”), so as to balance the takers (“backers”). What does Chis Hibbert think of the Grand National fiasco?

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Arbitraging bets is the same thing as matching bets. They are equivalent. When someone places a bid at price 10 and someone else places an ask at price 9, there is an “arbitrage” that the exchange eliminates by matching the bets. When the exchange arbs a multi-outcome market, it’s still matching, just in a more complicated way.

Having said that, I now see that perhaps there is something unfair going on. In this new type of matching, Betfair is apparently charging the bettor their full price, rather than giving them the “best available price”. I can see how that is a fundamental change that deserves legitimate criticism. It’s as if in the above example, the exchange charged the buyer 10 and only gave the seller 9, keeping the spread for itself.

This is a great quote from Rab that summarizes nicely IMHO: “betting exchanges should merely be viewed as traditional bookmakers who have taken the decision to minimise risk (as any traditional bookmaker can and often will do) by only taking one bet when they know they can find another punter to take the other side of that bet“.

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Economist Michael Giberson:

[...] Pennock didn’t challenge the bet matching logic. Rather, he objected to the way the bet matching change was implemented — the failure of BetFair to give traders the best available price when it makes a match. As Pennock noted in an earlier comment, the matching method itself is improved. The difference between the bet matching logic and the prices at which the matches are made will become important with BetFair wants to re-introduce the service, or more importantly, when BetFair wants to explain the re-introduced service. My hope is that they re-introduce the “same old” improved bet matching logic, but they include a new capability of matching at the best available price.

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Previously:

- The free but unsollicited piece of advice from the Chairman of the Midas Oracle Advisory Board to the BetFair market designers.

- BetFair’s new bet-matching logic + BetFair Malta’s trading on the multiples

- BetFair Malta’s combo market maker (trading algorithm + human market makers) operating on the multiples

- BetFair withdraws / improves its brand-new matching-bet logic, which was (kind of) endorsed by the Chairman of the Midas Oracle Advisory Board.

- One un-hired job candidate and one HammerSmith employee tell all about BetFair Malta’s combo market maker (trading algorithm + human market makers) operating on the multiples.

Jason, I think the allegation of queue jumping made in some of the comments is based upon a misunderstanding. BetFair is just matching the orders when a match becomes available, not inserting new orders at the front of the queue.
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The new method will deprive outside traders access to these riskless arb opportunities, so they may feel like they are being jumped by BetFair, but really it is just BetFair doing its matching job better.
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The only issue in my view was the capture of the overround because less sophisticated traders were not aware of the implied odds available, given the existing offers on related outcomes in a multi-outcome event, leading the traders to post over-generous offers to the system. BetFair should use an approach like the ‘phantom offer’ generation that Chris Hibbert explained a while back, to show the effective prices available. That approach would leave BetFair out of the overround business and back to collecting a commission, only, on bets matched.

But his comment didn’t satisfy everyone… The polémique is still going on, unabated, as I type this…

UPDATE: See the comments under this post…