You Pays Your Money...

Here’s an interesting web site called Intrade where you can ‘invest’ in your predictions about politics, entertainment, financial indicators, weather, current events and legal affairs. Basically, traders buy and sell ‘futures contracts’. The price is set between 0 and 100 based on trading activity. The closer the price is to 100, the more traders think that event is to happen.

For example, right now traders give the Dems a 64% chance of winning the House of Representatives, but only a 30% of taking the Senate. Jim Doyle should be smiling as the traders give him an 85% chance of being re-elected Governor of Wisconsin.

At the end of the campaign the price for the loser drops to zero and rises to 100 for the winner. Traders can buy and sell at any time, so the market is dynamic. Ok, yes, this sounds a lot like gambling, and yes, people are actually using real money to buy these futures contracts, but the cool thing is that Intrade gives a market-based reality check on all the campaign hype.

Oh, and Mario Lopez? 65% chance to win Dancing with the Stars!