(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
Loading ...I have been learning a lot about prediction markets and thought I would share some of my initial findings. Some I loved, some I like, some I didn’t understand, and quite a few really lame ones. Click “more” to see my prediction market predictions.
Recommended Prediction Markets
NewsFutures - http://us.newsfutures.com
Simple to use. Within just a few minutes, I was able to start trading for or against outcomes in the news, from whether Royal will become president of France or if Bird Flu will hit the EU before the US. Easy to use and always topical. The best thing is that one can easily just vote on other markets.
RealityMarkets.com - http://realitymarkets.com/
Really basic but also really easy to use. Instead of being a very specialized and highly-categorized prediction market based on politics or entertainment, this market is free form, which I think is a much more powerful strategy. The look and feel are very basic but I was up and running within minutes. Also, they offer you lots of money to trade at first and I wasted it all in one trade called, “Lindsay Lohan Sex Video,” which is a market as to whether “a sex video of Lindsay Lohan surfaces on the Internet.” I really like it.
HedgeStreet - http://www.hedgestreet.com/
I don’t like to trade or do the whole stock market thing but I do like the job that hedge fund managers have and HedgeStreet is a very slick and compelling way of interacting with the market, based on cash trades. Easy to use, fully-documented, and potentially very profitable. I like the way it looks and feel and I might actually try it out. “HedgeStreet® is the first Internet-based, government regulated market where traders can hedge against or speculate on economic events and price movements. HedgeStreet is a secure, fully-transparent marketplace, subject to regulatory oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).”
Hollywood Stock Exchange - http://www.hsx.com/
HSX is fantasy football for the un-sporty. It is a lot of fun to play around on HSX. The interface isn’t fancy but it is intuitive and easy-to-use. The trading is simple and uses some pretty simple Web2.0 Ajaxy tools. You can trade movie stocks or bonds based on stars and funds based on genres such as the academy awards fund, etc.
Inkling - http://inklingmarkets.com/
Within seconds of joining up with Inkling I had already asked a question of the market: Will OpenOffice Integrate with Google Docs & Spreadsheets? http://home.inklingmarkets.com/market/show/3285 You are allowed to participate in other markets and spend your initial money wherever and however you want, although you’re not allowed to invest your money in your own markets. Described as easy enough for your grandmother to use while powerful enough for anything. It uses modern tools and is the most advanced when it comes to ease of use and modern programming in the form of AJAX and javascript. I will personally use the tool again.
BlogShares - http://www.blogshares.com
BlogShares is a fantasy stock market for weblogs. Players get to invest a fictional $500, and blogs are valued by incoming links. There is no real money switching hands. It is a fantasy emergent market with the goal of trying to allow the market to find itself and choose the “real” top blog by virtue of a stock-market-based model.
CrowdIQ - http://www.crowdiq.com
Crowd IQ is a platform that allows anyone to do one or more of several things. One can just go to CrowdIQ in order to participate in a Market or a Contract or create a Market or Contract. Each Market can be classified into one of several categories: sports, politics, entertainment, current events, business, sci/tech, other. One of the easier-to-use platforms. Real money is not traded on CrowdIQ.
Yahoo! Tech Buzz Game - http://buzz.research.yahoo.com/bk/index.html
Yahoo! Tech Buzz is a lot of fun. I can always tell if I like a product because I will sit there farting around until I have invested all of my money and I invested all of my money right away and wish I had much much more. I am so glad I don’t visit Las Vegas because I for sure would waste all of my money in the first few hours and then have to hang by the pool for the entire rest of the trip.
Washington Stock Exchange - http://www.thewsx.com/
Washington Stock Exchange was a lot of fun to play with. It is very simple to use and they offer you a lot of money with which to play initially. This seems to be a very important part of my happy experience. I have been playing around the Washington Stock Exchange until I invested all of my money. Of course, Washington Stock Exchange has to do with Washington politics so I am doing rather well. There is also quite a diversity of choices so that one can quickly participate right out of the box.
Other Prediction Markets
CDMS - http://cdms.inklingmarkets.com/
CDMS is the Collective Decision Making Systems from the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The prediction market is built upon the Inkling Market engine.
BETDAQ - http://www.betdaq.com
Offshore betting using the prediction market to predict the outcomes of sporting events. Although I am not allowed to join from the US, I was able to join as a “German.” This is a pure gambling site. The site requests that you add funds to your account immediately upon joining. The money bets center on sports but also can encompass anything, including The Oscars, Dancing on Ice, and UK Politics. Pure market economics.
Betfair - http://www.betfair.com/
Offshore betting using the prediction market to predict the outcomes of sporting events. Although I am not allowed to join from the US, I was able to join as a “German.” This is a pure gambling site. The site requests that you add funds to your account immediately upon joining. The money bets center on sports but also can encompass anything, including The Oscars, Dancing on Ice, and UK Politics. Pure market economics.
Cenimar - http://www.cenimar.com
CENIMAR is a source for World Intelligence. It is free to join and allows anyone to “open a contract” on anything. The concept allows anyone to submit anything with the understanding that if the contract doesn’t have legs and isn’t attractive to investors then the quality of the data won’t be either convincing or attract enough investment to offer worthwhile statistics. Users start out with I$250 of fake currency, or Intel Dollars. The entire thing is based on spycraft. The handle given to me is agent 49460.
De Politieke Aandelenmarkt - http://devolkskrant.newsfutures.com/
Dutch language.
Foresight Exchange - http://www.ideosphere.com/
Complex, complicated, and not-intuitive. Typical database-backed website.
InnovateUs Corporate Prediction Tool - http://www.innovateus.net
Lame. Very basic.
Intrade - http://www.intrade.com/
Lame
Iowa Electronic Markets - http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/
The first and one of the most influential, but the biggest lack is that in order to participate, one needs to sign up, then print a text form, sign a piece of paper, write a $5 check to join and then between $5-$500 dollars to invest online.
Poolitics - http://www.poolitics.com
Poolitics is a very nice concept but lacks interface and engagement. Some of the other better market platform allow a bunch of free trades to give new users a taste of the tool.
ProTrade Sports - http://www.protrade.com/
ProTrade is a mixture between a prediction market and a social network. This is a very unique and innovative mashup. The social network aspect allows sports fans to share information, collaborate, and collect a group of friends. This technique is smart because it allows synchronized gaming of the system.
PublicGyan - http://www.publicgyan.com/
Requires being invited and I have yet to be invited.
Serotonin Software Prediction Markets - http://www.serotoninsoftware.com/markets/marketList.ctrl
Very simple, very spare, very easy-to-use and very fast and simple. I would really like to see what comes of it. The number of markets are small and the interface is so spare that it is almost unusable.
SpreadFair - https://cantor.spreadfair.com/
Sports betting prediction market that is focused on the UK and requires one to pay in immediately upon trying the site.
The simExchange - http://www.thesimexchange.com/
The entire market is based on video games. The interface is super simple but there are very easy-to-use server-side tools that allow the purchase to be real-time and one can easily see if there is enough money in the account in order to make the investment. The market is a great way of figuring out if a particular game will be popular or is popular. They expect gaming so they will very quickly cancel an account if they catch you gaming the results. There are too few games in the simExchange so there really aren’t enough markets to really invest in.
TradeSports - http://www.tradesports.com/
UK only
Trendio.com - http://www.trendio.com
Very cartoonish and easy to use. Trendio really is interested in just general concepts and loose descriptions over time, for example, “child porn” and how that trends up or down over time. Trends on Iran, etc. The general vibe is really general and I am not sure how to interpret or analyze the trends.
UBC Election Stock Market - http://esm.ubc.ca/
Pretty basic and lame and academic.
World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Prediction Market - http://weforum.newsfutures.com/login/login.html
Simply a laboratory of predictions by the WEF
Filed under: Prediction Markets
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Since you have a great list and reviews of existing Prediction Markets, you might want to take a look at Bet2Give.com (still in its infancy, but an interesting twist on the dilemma between real money and legality.)
Also, here is link to the newly formed PM Industry Association (PMIA) created earlier this month by most of the major players you mention above: http://pmindustry.org
(Disclaimer: I work for Newsfutures who created Bet2Give, and is a founding member of he PMIA.)
Enjoy!
Thanks so much for that.