Tom W. Bell

Washington Stock Exchange Takes Off

The Washington Stock Exchange (WSX) has successfully launched! Because it uses market processes to predict electoral and legislative events, WSX promises to make political news more accurate and fun. Soon, reporters might routinely sprinkle their stories with statements like, “Traders on the Washington Stock Exchange still predict that Republicans will hold onto to the House, but the odds just got longer.” As an alternative to polls or talking heads, WSX offers the virtues of blogospheric decentralization plus hard numbers.


Want to know whether or not Arnold Schwarzeneger will be reelected California’s governor? Check out the GVARSC06 stock. It currently trades at W$96.08/share, indicating that most traders think he’ll win. If you think that too optimistic, you can express your opinion by shorting GVARSC06. Guess correctly and you’ll win both $W (the play-money used on WSX) and, not incidentally, bragging rights.

I proudly to serve on the exchange’s advisory board. WSX promises both to do well and to do good. Visit WSX, and get the news of the future, today!

[Crossposted to Agoraphilia.]

September 18, 2006 | Comments |

Viewing 4 Comments

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    As I'm sure you know, this sort of betting has been done in e.g. England, for years. And has also been going on for years with the "Iowa Electronic Markets". The problem is, market-worship to the contrary, it's not really all that useful. For some extremely deep reasons - e.g. accurate information doesn't sell well in the media.

    Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad thing. But it's already been around, and done nothing much except produce some self-referential punditry.
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    Granted, Seth, that some markets have offered trading on some political claims. But I think WSX offers a real leap forward in terms of the extent of coverage, focus on political events, and user interface. Those are not incidental matters, either, when you're asking what it will take to get media types to start referencing a prediction market.
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    How is it better than, e.g., Intrade.com ? That's had extensive scope and focus on political events.

    WSX isn't even using real money!
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    It looks like a lot of the Intrade claims are pretty inactive. For whatever reason, Intrade has hardly proven especially effective in handling political claims. Maybe too many U.S. citizens fear the reach of local anti-gaming laws. Or maybe they don't like the Intrade interface. At any rate, I say: "Let the market (in markets) decide!"

    As for the real/play money distinction, some scholarship indicates that it doesn't really matter much. Or, to be more precise, it looks as if real money markets do better at rewarding discovery whereas play money ones do better at collecting information. I'm a big fan of real money markets, but I'm not sure they're absolutely necessary in this context, where we care more about measuring preferences than we do rewarding innovation.

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