Category Archives: Prediction Markets
U.S. Election: How did Prediction Markets do?
At 4 days past the election day, we know who the next President will be and we know the results from every state bar one. Missouri has yet to deliver a final answer with a total of 1,442,673 votes for Obama and 1,436,814 votes for McCain. However, since this is a difference of 5,859 votes [...]
Prediction Markets – Final Election Tally
Today being the day before the U.S. Election, we’d thought it be a great opportunity to check up on what the prediction markets have been saying about the potential outcome and prepare to compare them to the actual results. Since we at Dumbagent have been tracking the prediction markets for the US Elections for some [...]
The Manipulation of Crowds
Those who have followed our various examples of the Dumb Agent Theory, efficient markets, and in particular how prediction markets are successful at predicting, might have a nagging doubt about manipulation. How easy is it really for someone, or a group of people, to manipulate prices? A paper by David Rothschild and Justin Wolfers points [...]
Predicting Palin
Those who read our previous post regarding prediction markets know that we were following the VP candidate announcements with interest. They may have also noticed the the prediction markets were incorrect. Once again, Joseph Biden was the top Democratic VP pick for the markets, while the Republican pick varied between Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty. [...]
Dumb Investing: Investment Themes
The recent pulldown in commodity prices has not convinced me to reduce allocation in gold/energy. Investors bought into the “demand destruction” theory while the US Dollar went up in response to problems in the European Union. In herd-like fashion, hedge funds and institutions exited in tandem, triggering stop loss orders and heralding the “end of the commodities boom”. [...]
