BetFairs Mark Davies (the Prince of betting exchange PR) has just gotten a second omelet in the face.

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First, the Financial Times &#8212-and, now, Freakonomics.

The journalistic rule should be that, if you cite one prediction exchange, you should cite the one that is the most liquid on the market you are writing about. For UK politics, it is clearly BetFair.

BetFair has clearly a PR problem.

The UK political prediction markets are starting to get fun.

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The British Republicans (&#8220-the Tories&#8221-) have dipped a bit more at BetFair, yesterday, and everybody is wondering why. (See the first comment in the second link.) Expect Max Keiser to weight in. We are going to have fun this spring, I kind of feel that in the air. :-D

UPDATE: Bad poll for the Tories.

Allegedly, an idiot pressed the wrong button on March 16s InTrade ObamaCare prediction market. Do you buy it?

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Marcus Shea:

Here’s the most likely scenario as to what happened here:

Somebody had a decent short position. Say they had about 65 shares (the volume bars indicate that this was likely a &lt- 100 share transaction, ie, &lt- $5 worth of commissions for Intrade, so mentioning commissions / greed as a motivator is pure ignorance). They wanted to put up a buy of 65 shares at say 5%, so that if the price ever dips that low, they can close their short position and wind up with a nice profit. And then, big mistake, they hit sell instead of buy. The market plummets. Mystery solved. It&#8217-s called human error.