McCain Plummets On Right-Leaning Intrade

This is an aside titled 'McCain Plummets On Right-Leaning Intrade' dated 9/25/08

Although, many have commented on Intrade’s Republican-bias, it was still surprising to read Fivethirtyeight’s report on some funny business going down on the prediction market: “every so often, some individual trader or some small group of traders are shorting all the Obama contacts in bulk and resetting the entire market. The markets then organically climb back upward until the rogue trader strikes again six or eight hours later. The volumes on these contracts have been very high for the past week as a result…What’s a little weird, however, is that this rouge trader is not only selling Obama contracts and buying McCain contracts …. they also seem to be buying Hillary Clinton contracts.” The charts on Hillary and Obama trades are identical — trades happen at the same time. Fivethirtyeight explains, “someone is betting on some sort of disqualifying event happening to Obama…I don’t think this is any cause for alarm… if Joe Biden contracts were being bought up as part of this scheme, that might be more concerning, but they aren’t. Still, if I were the FBI, I would probably want to know the identity of this trader.” This was all before McCain “suspended” his campaign. In the meantime, Obama’s trading at 59.5, up from 52.3 yesterday afternoon. (McCain is 41.8.)

Posted by Joanne on Sep. 25, 2008

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