How do I get report data? replied by dcarlisle @ Sat, 19 Apr 2008 00:24:21 -0000

dcarlisle — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 00:24:21 -0000

Thanks for the follow up Adam.

Don

How do I get report data? replied by nate @ Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:46:48 -0000

nate — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:46:48 -0000

The .csv reports are slightly in flux at the moment as we make them a lot easier to get to. Pretty soon we’ll have a page with the reports available.

Can you send us an email (admin at inklingmarkets dot com) with the market you are trying to get a report for please, and we can send it along.

How do I get report data? replied by dcarlisle @ Thu, 17 Apr 2008 05:22:23 -0000

dcarlisle — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 05:22:23 -0000

On your site it states that I can get .csv data. How do I get this data from a market that was already run? Thanks!

Markets with 13 year + expiry ??? posted by rixster @ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 22:07:05 -0000

rixster — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 22:07:05 -0000

I’ve just seen people create markets with expiries that are literally decades into the future.. i.e. one was “will the be a cure for diabetes in 2020” and another was “when will man walk on the moon next”. Now I’m all for other people creating markets in order to bring people onto the site etc etc but my question / query / discussion point is “Why create markets that will tie up your inklings for a decade or more???”

I know you can cash out at any time etc etc but surely shorter running markets would create more liquidity and a more interesting marketplace for everybody…

Anybody else agree or disagree? I am willing to be corrected !

Buy Silver or Buy Gold? replied by patricio @ Tue, 29 Jan 2008 20:00:16 -0000

patricio — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 20:00:16 -0000

Hi,

I´m new.
Please go to-
http://silverandgoldprice.inklingmarkets.com/me…

Graph doesn't display both markets replied by nate @ Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:48:32 -0000

nate — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:48:32 -0000

Nope, this type of market only shows the one stuck in the graph. Will get a fix out soon. Thanks for pointing this out.

Graph doesn't display both markets replied by mvguy @ Tue, 06 Nov 2007 17:21:16 -0000

mvguy — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 17:21:16 -0000

I made the On which date will a U.S. presidential candidate from each major party clinch his or her nomination? market. For some reason, only the Republican results display. I’ve filed a bug report, but I also wonder if there’s anything I might have done wrong in setting this up to keep the Democrats from appearing. Any suggestions? Thanks.

The single outcome delemma replied by ednique @ Sat, 29 Sep 2007 09:08:05 -0000

ednique — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 09:08:05 -0000

You guys are great… Thanx!
I now figured out what my problem really is… The thing is that in this particular competition the number 1 spot is so dead easy to predict that I was puzzled about the possible outcome and wanted to make the prediction more interesting.

The proposal of nate might be just what I am looking for!
Asking the right question is more important I realize now.
and Nate… I wasn’t complaining about the soft eighther…

Nate: the equation is actually “how much % of the maximum points did a particulart team makes up till now” where I assumed that if they perform exactly the same troughout the competition, that they have that % chance of winning the competition as 100% is winning all points.

But as I realize now, I’m asking the wrong question. The how many points question will much better represent what I am looking for.
In that way people will be trading on all stocks instead of the few possible candidates and each weeks the points will change and as such people will have an urge to trade week after week during the whole competition.

My “which project should we pick” question is indeed more of a poll although in a poll you ask the voter’s choice whereas in a market people will trade in a stock where they think most people will trade in…
which is not neccesary their own choice…
Maybe you people have some document or something else where sample questions are given of good working markets for business?

The single outcome delemma replied by onemike @ Sat, 29 Sep 2007 01:54:09 -0000

onemike — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 01:54:09 -0000

Nate: I didn’t mean to imply criticism of the market maker or anything other than, as you put it, “It’s just not a good fit.” I’m a big fan of the LMSR. ;)

The single outcome delemma replied by nate @ Fri, 28 Sep 2007 19:01:46 -0000

nate — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 19:01:46 -0000

ednique: It looks like the real goal of your market is not to dwell in the world of probabilities but you might just want to compare how many points your teams are going to score. You could just create a market by choosing “The answer to your question will be a number.” and then “Determine a specific number (e.g. xx.yy)” and ask “How many points will these teams score in the competition.” This way you can create stocks for each of your teams, and have traders pick actual point scores of each team. If you only have a max of 8 points in the game you are describing, make sure you pick a scale of .1 so you traders have a bit more room to play. So a price of $80 will equal 8 points.

The single outcome delemma replied by nate @ Fri, 28 Sep 2007 18:22:24 -0000

nate — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 18:22:24 -0000

onemike: Inkling is meant to help you predict something you can measure later on. Will something happen? How many of X will happen? Etc. This thing that you measure at the end you want to be independent of how the prediction market works.

If you are just asking, “which project should we pick”, this is a much better question for a traditional poll or take a vote.

This isn’t the fault of our market maker or using some other mechansim. It’s just not a good fit for what a prediction market is meant for. A prediction market is meant to predict something. If you ask your market to just trade and we’ll pick the highest priced stock as a project and then pay off that highest priced stock just because it’s the highest priced stock, people are now just trying to predict what other people are going to pick as the highest priced stock. There’s no actual feedback loop on anything important.

If the project ends up losing you a million dollars, how do you “punish” your traders for choosing a project with a negative ROI? You’ve already rewarded them for just picking the stock they thought everyone else was going to pick, not on some criteria that is completely independent from the market.

ednique: I’m still having a tough time understanding what your getting at. I don’t really know what (points * 100) / maxpoints is an equation for. Probability is the measure of how likely an event is. All the probabilities of all the possible outcomes of an event have to add up to 1.

Let’s pretend the 6 teams in your example, were complete identical (like the side s of a coin) you would say they all have an equal chance of winning. What is the probability of T1 winning: 1/6. That’s about 17%. How about T2. It’s the same 1/6 17%. Add them all up and it equals 1 or 100%. That’s all you can work with.

Also, if we state that team-a (the winner) was predicted with “there’s a 96% change that they will win.” and we look at the runner up which states “there’s a 6% chance that they will be the winner.” doesn’t that look wrong?

If the market actually thinks that this team has a 96% of winning the rest of the field has a 4% of winning since 96+4 = 100. There’s nothing wrong with how this looks. The crowd feels that team 1 is awesome, and almost a sure thing of winning this thing. The rest of the field doesn’t have much of a chance. Well they have a 4% chance.

If I look at the outcome of a question like “Who will win this years competition?” you will have indeed one winner with a probability of 90 or above when the cashing out is about to happen…

Inkling isn’t always spitting out these sure thing predictions because life isn’t filled with these sure things. Look at:

http://home.inklingmarkets.com/market/show/6569

The Sopranos definitely had a better chance of winning than any other show in their category. But the rest of the field as a whole had a chance of winning of over 50%.

The single outcome delemma replied by ednique @ Fri, 28 Sep 2007 16:20:06 -0000

ednique — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 16:20:06 -0000

Pretty good remark…
I do believe that the influence of 1 single person indeed needs to be limited like x% of your funds can be put into one single stock and x% of your funds can be invested in a single market…

Those with the most funds still can have a bigger impact on the market, but then again they have bigger funds because they are better in making predictions… Just the altitude of the impact is limited…

For the double auction style you need to map a buy with a sell and to most people, this is too complicated…

I did read something that was interesting where they said that a person with a larger amount of funds gets weigthed higher automatically when calculating the new rate of the stock because his track record was better. This extra coefficient was actually applied per category so that in one category you have a higer rate then another…

I’m still puzzled if multiple answers are better then a single outcome both in business and pleasure markets…
Pikking a single outcome sounds too much like a poll to me…
I guess I need to do some more reading on the subject…

The single outcome delemma replied by onemike @ Fri, 28 Sep 2007 12:47:55 -0000

onemike — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 12:47:55 -0000

It sounds link you want to predict a ranking of proposed projects, and then use the rankings to decide which projects to choose, and then payoff the shares for the projects chosen.

But it gets a little tricky since the market turns into trying to predict which 3 proposals will be in top three proposals at the end of the market period. The problem with running such a market when the market uses an automated market maker (at least the version that Inkling uses) is that the last trader in the market can effectively pick which three projects end up with the highest price and therefore become selected (if market price is the sole criteria for project selection, and assuming the trader has sufficient funds). So rather than ‘wisdom of crowds’ you get the decision of the last trader in the market.

Haven’t thought about this much, but a continuous double auction style prediction market may be less subject to this criticism when used for this purpose.

The single outcome delemma replied by ednique @ Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:17:51 -0000

ednique — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:17:51 -0000

Assume different…
In business they could have a market of ideas and people are predicting which idea will be launched first by the company.
After a while we will have a clear top winner of 95% all others are merely having any percentage. They close the market.
Now the company launches their top idea, but another company launches more or less the same idea just before them.

Now they have NO idea what to launch because they don’t have a clue what the runner up idea is…

If they chose to have a multiple correct answer outcome, they would certainly have a runner up…

They could ask: which will be the next 3 idea’s that we will launch?

The single outcome delemma replied by ednique @ Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:12:38 -0000

ednique — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:12:38 -0000

I wanted to have correct initial prices for my question “who will be the winner of this competition?”
So I was thinking how to do that… Luckaly the competition already started some months ago and as such 8 points could already be gained.
Assume that this is the current outcome:
T1|7
T2|6
T3|6
T4|3
T5|2
T6|0
So how can you know what the probability is of each team being the winner?
I think: (points * 100) / maxpoints
so:
T1|7|700/8|87.5
T2|6|600/8|75
T3|6|600/8|75
T4|3|300/8|37.5
T5|2|200/8|25
T6|0|0/8|0

As such T1 has 87.5% chance of winning the competition and T2 75% chance of winning the competition…

Then I though… Well isn’t this what the market should predict? rather then just saying T1 95% and T2 5% and all other 0%...
To me indeed T1 seems to be the winner and as such it should have 100% probability to be the winner… But I wonder about the other stocks… Their value must be really representative…
The 3rd in our example has a 75% chance of winning the competition… but using a single answer I cannot show this in my market…

That’s when I thought I should change the question and make it have multiple answers and ask “who will make the top-4?”.
In the details I then specified some payout rules…

I’m sure I’m getting something wrong here… so please help me figure this one out…

The single outcome delemma replied by nate @ Thu, 27 Sep 2007 22:49:52 -0000

nate — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 22:49:52 -0000

Thanks for the question. But I’m probably misunderstanding your point.

To me it seems that the runner up actually had a 85% chance of winning the competition and the winner actually 96% chance.

The probability of all outcomes of something all have to add up to 1 (100%). So if the contest you describe only has one winner how can 2 people have a (.85 + .96 = 1.81) 181% probability of winning?

The single outcome delemma replied by ednique @ Thu, 27 Sep 2007 12:49:17 -0000

ednique — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 12:49:17 -0000

Please help me figure this one out…

If I look at the outcome of a question like “Who will win this years competition?” you will have indeed one winner with a probability of 90 or above when the cashing out is about to happen…

That’s all ok, but if you look at the market in its whole, there’s only 10% left to be devided by other stocks and as such there is no comparison possible between the other stocks.

Also, if we state that team-a (the winner) was predicted with “there’s a 96% change that they will win.” and we look at the runner up which states “there’s a 6% chance that they will be the winner.” doesn’t that look wrong?
To me it seems that the runner up actually had a 85% chance of winning the competition and the winner actually 96% chance.

So I came up with this idea:
I create a multiple correct answer question like: “who will make the top-10” out of the possible 20 teams and I add some payout rules like:

winner of competition will be granted $100
each team that end into the top-10 also get a $100 but only if the position in the competition is the same as the position in the market.
So if team-x is 3rd in the competition and in the market it has the 3rd highest value, it will be awarded $100

Do you think the result of this market would represent really much better?
Or do I completely misunderstood prediction markets?
I also thought that the teams in the middle more often switch places and as such the market would be more alive if people were trying to predict those places.

How about a "Will a NL team or an AL team win the World Series?" posted by onemike @ Fri, 06 Jul 2007 03:07:10 -0000

onemike — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 03:07:10 -0000

Anyone want to create this market? Very simple, either an American League or a National League team will win the World Series. Set up a market so we can predict which league’s team will prevail.

(I’d do it myself, but I want to trade in the market once it is created.)

Initial weightings in single event markets? replied by nate @ Sun, 01 Jul 2007 04:46:07 -0000

nate — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 04:46:07 -0000

I hear you guys on setting the prices again in this market type. It used to be there and we took it away because it was getting too complicated when we added the ability to add a new stock to a running market and the prices magically adjust downward. We also thought it would take out one more thing that people had to worry about. But I think we’ll be adding it back real soon. Sorry about the inconvenience. We had only the best intentions :)

Initial weightings in single event markets? replied by redwraith @ Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:03:27 -0000

redwraith — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:03:27 -0000

All right, I’m guilty. I created a market without knowing all the nuts and bolts, namely setting intital prices. I saw while setting the Wimbledon market up the inital prices column, but I couldn’t find anything to click on to adjust them. Therefore all the stocks started out at about 16, giving the early players a hefty profit on one of the stocks. Am I missing something really obvious here? Any help would be appreciated…

Market requests replied by onemike @ Sat, 16 Jun 2007 04:09:09 -0000

onemike — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 04:09:09 -0000

I’ve argued elsewhere that a prediction market in Harry Potter endings doesn’t make much sense, at least not in the real-money prediction market world. Unlike opinions about the winner of the NBA championships, for example, where lots of people have relevant opinions to be captured in a market, only a select “insider” group will have relevant information. Any non-insider is just guessing, and that is not a good investment strategy. (See my post at the prediction market group blog [url=http://www.midasoracle.org/2007/06/09/harry-potter-will-not-die-dont-bet-on-it/]Harry Potter will NOT die? Don’t Bet on It[/url] )

Of course, Inklings aren’t real money, so I guess my objections don’t work. Maybe I’ll set something up…

Market requests replied by char @ Fri, 15 Jun 2007 08:22:06 -0000

char — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 08:22:06 -0000

Some markets I want to trade in but either care about too much or too little to run:

How will the last Harry Potter book end?

Will the last Harry Potter book (or at least its ending) leak before the official release date?

What will the global average surface temperature be in 2020 (or any other year)?

When will [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratko_Mladic]Ratko Mladic[/url] be indicted by the ICTY or proved dead? This could be a matter of years, but I’ve heard rumors that it’ll be in the next few weeks.

Markets I want to bid on (so you should make them). replied by onemike @ Tue, 12 Jun 2007 11:07:49 -0000

onemike — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 11:07:49 -0000

It’s not just ethical, it’s efficient. Assume for a moment that you were the market maker in a real money market, so your money was on the line when the payoffs come due. In that case the best you can do is start the market at exactly the price that would make you indifferent.

Otherwise you are giving the first trader who comes along a present.

(The only reason you can give yourself a present with Inklings set up is that they pay out Inklings from the "corporate treasury", and then only if you cheat and use a dummy account.)

Closing out stocks... replied by jlc21 @ Mon, 11 Jun 2007 09:35:49 -0000

jlc21 — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 09:35:49 -0000

Never mind, I think I figured it out.

Closing out stocks... replied by jlc21 @ Sun, 10 Jun 2007 14:08:10 -0000

jlc21 — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 14:08:10 -0000

I’m running the 2007 College World Series market, and I want to close out the teams that have been eliminated, but I can’t figure out how to do it. When I go to edit the market, the trash can icons show up next to some but not all of the stocks/teams. Is there a reason why this is happening? Or am I in the wrong place? Thanks.

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