Even the one run by the Wall Street Journal and opportunistically pumped up and over-hyped by Justin Wolfers.

I told my readers from day one that those spinoffs were not the real McCoy.

I told you so.

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InTrade – (Dublin, Ireland, E.U.)

• InTrade .NET
• Play-Money InTrade = Play-Money InTrade — CDA with an automated market-maker that synchronizes the prices with those of the real-money prediction exchanges.
• WSJ Political Market — With the Wall Street Journal
• FT Predict — With the Financial Times
• Real Clear Fantasy Election — With the Real Clear Politics blog
• National Journal’s Political Stock Exchange — With the National Journal magazine
• Rasmussen Markets — With Rasmussen, the polling firm

What a bunch of technologically retarded journalos.

Newspapers need to die.

Newspapers = dinosaurs.

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The latest installment (which does not featured a single prediction market chart) is written by Justin Wolfers and Eric Zitzwewitz. A pillar of prediction market journalism is to show dynamics charts of prediction markets. Just describing with words a rise or a free-fall does not do the trick. Here are some charts that the two Wall Street Journal stringers don’t want you to see:

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2008 US Presidential Elections

2008 US Presidential Election Winner

2008 Democratic Nominee

2008 Republican Nominee

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BetFair

Next US President

Winning Party

Democratic Candidate

Republican Candidate

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Next US President Will Be Democratic.

© NewsFutures

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It’s obvious to anyone (but to Justin Wolfers, Eric Zitzwewitz, and their technophobic editor at the WSJ) that prediction market event study would be more usable with charts legended with news markers. (Maybe that will give Nigel Eccles an idea for his next startup. )

So, let’s pass the truisms…

• If Pepsi withdrew from the Cola Wars, then sales of Coke would go up; 7-Up isn’t quite as similar of a product, and so would benefit a bit less. So too in politics.
• After the rich theater of the early primaries, the lead-up to Super Tuesday now looks pretty conventional, with each race expected to involve two candidates, and no third-party surprises.

And let’s try to spot some prediction market intelligence in their report. I don’t see any. It’s a boring historical report from two people whose specialty is everything (economics, prediction markets, betting, gambling, finance, sports) but politics. The ABC of reporting is to trade your passion. Political prediction market journalism deserves more that two university professors who are out of their turf and are using a clunky content management system to tout a bot-driven play-money prediction sub-exchange.

Justin Wolfers and Eric Zitzwewitz are great prediction market experts, and their write-up in the Wall Street Journal is gentle, but that’s not enough because the competition is formidable. There is a glut of amateur and professional political analysts out there, who live and breathe by politics, and the top one percent of them outputs great, pertinent stuff that draws millions of pageviews. In such a cluttered field, you have to differentiate a lot by innovating a lot. Nothing in Justin Wolfers and Eric Zitzewitz’s political prediction market event study stands out. Instead of carving a niche, they are littering redundant banalities.

That said, they are true pioneers in prediction market journalism. They will make improvement, over the coming years, hopefully.

The Wall Street Journal is running a political futures market where you can “trade” on candidates’ future performance or see how others assess their chances.

An important remark is that the WSJ Political Market is, number one, a play-money prediction exchange (unlike the real-money prediction exchanges that are studied closely by the economists such as Eric Zitzewitz, and which are the topic of the rest of the WSJ Op-Ed), and, number two, that the WSJ’s play-money prediction exchange is driven by an automated market maker linking InTrade’s real-money prediction markets and a set of play-money prediction exchanges powered by the InTrade-TradeSports software (Play-Money InTrade, FT Predict, WSJ Political Market, National Journal Ex., Rasmussen Ex., Real Clear Politics Ex., etc.).

I am all for:

1. play-money prediction exchanges;
2. automated market makers helping liquidity in play-money prediction markets (e.g., Inkling);
3. the InTrade-TradeSports software used for play-money prediction markets;
4. InTrade-TradeSports selling its software to the big media (and, later, to Fortune-500 corporations, I suppose).

My only remark is that, if the InTrade-powered sub-exchanges do indeed use a new kind of automated market marker, it should be disclosed and detailed. That’s all what I’m saying. I’m just asking for the truth.

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WSJ Political Market:

Welcome to the WSJ Political Market
November 29, 2007

The WSJ Political Market is an exchange marketplace [???], like a stock market [no... like a derivative exchange], except the “stocks” traded are political candidates and the currency you’ll use is fantasy [and except that some "stocks" expire to zero... thus they cannot be qualified of "stocks"]. Users can trade contracts that are tied to the outcome of future political events, from individual state primaries to the general election.

Each participant is given ten thousand fictional WSJ dollars (WSJ$10,000) upon registration. You can use this fictional money to buy and sell contracts – buy if you think the outcome is likely, and sell if you don’t. The price of a contract reflects the market’s assessment of how likely its is to happen. Your performance will be tracked and the best traders will be ranked on our Leaderboard page[.]

Futures markets such as this one have been gaining attention for their powerful predictive capabilities. The prices on the WSJ Political Market reflect trading from millions of users via our partner InTrade. [Mysterious Irish sentence!!!!!] Sift through the data to gain unique insights into the 2008 Presidential race.

FAQ

Q: I am new – how do I get started?
A: Once you open an account then go to “Trading and Quotes” tab and select the market you are interested in then you are ready to start making predictions.

Q: I think an outcome isn’t going to happen, but you don’t have the opposite result, what do I do?
A: That’s the beauty of a Political Stock Exchange, to predict against an outcome you simply sell the contract.

Q: But I don’t own any contracts, how can I sell something I don’t own?
A: When you sell a contract you’re actually making the opposite prediction to buying the contract[.]

Q: Am I guaranteed the quoted price when I place an order?
A: We execute all orders automatically. When your order is entered it competes with others in a queue based on the best price and then the time the order was received by the Exchange. Orders at the same price joining the queue before yours have priority. Therefore we cannot guarantee the price until your order reaches the exchange and is executed at your quoted price or better.

Q: I have forgotten my login information
A: In the case of a forgotten password, click on the Login In link in the main login area, then select the Forgotten Password option. Enter the information requested and a new password will be emailed to you. In the interest of security, employees do not have access to your password but they can assist you with the Login Help section.

Q: Where do I find the Rules for expiring contracts?
A: The Contract Rules section can be found by clicking on the Rules link at the bottom of every page. This outlines how we list and expire contracts and includes circumstances such as games being postponed or players withdrawing etc. For Special contracts we may publish additional expiry rules in the Exchange News section (available from the Home Page).

Q: What is your role?
A: We match the orders of our predictions of our participants[.] [Do they view a bot as a "participant"? ]

Q: How do I contact You?
A: Email: predictions@wsj.com

[*] There aren’t any automated market makers at NewsFutures, my preferred play-money prediction exchange.

Links:

- InTrade – TradeSports

- TradeSports (play money) – InTrade (play money) – WSJ Political Market – FT Predict

- List of the main real-money and play-money prediction exhanges (betting exchanges) at Midas Oracle

- Complete list of the real-money and play-money prediction exchanges (betting exchanges) at Midas Oracle

- Complete list of the real-money and play-money prediction exchanges at CFM

- Yahoo! News US Political Dashboard

- Midas Oracle Dashboard