Prediction Market Leader Lays an Egg on big morning announcement

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Todd

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Aug 29, 2008, 11:10:06 AM8/29/08
to Prediction Markets
It seems the leader, innovator, - and whatever other adjectives have
been used by its founders to describe their own site - has crashed
terribly this morning.

INTRADE.com went into the hopper this morning as the Repub VP markets
were taking a wild turn. The site over loaded - allowing no one to
follow or trade the markets. Pawlenty dropped from 75 to 0, and
Parlin rocketed to 100 as thousands of users were unable to access the
web site.

What a horrible event for many traders who intended to trade this
event right to the final decision. Hours and hours of web pages not
loading, errors, and no help from the Intrade staff.

One of the other ironic part is that Tradesports, the sports exchange
site that supposively is no long affiliated with Intrade - also
crashed giving the same errors and page view problems. Same bank
account, same server, same mailing address - but nothing to do with
each other.


Now that all is said and done... the Sarah Parlin market has reached
99 and is just awaiting close out - while Pawlenty, Romney and all the
rest dive to 0 - Prediction market traders are left wondering about
the safety of their positions.

And now Intrade is back online - ready to be the leader in the events
that lead up to a result - but failing miserably at servicing their
paying customers.

Job well done.

Todd

Todd

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Aug 29, 2008, 11:35:45 AM8/29/08
to Prediction Markets
Here is the response from the "live" help - hours after the message is
sent, and well after the trading was done.

From: Intrade Help <he...@intrade.com>
Date: Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 11:14 AM
Subject: Re: Disgrace



Thank you for your enquiry. Please accept our sincere apologies for
these intermittent access issues. Our IT department are currently
working to resolve this. We will have full access as soon as possible.



Please let us know if we can help you further.



Kind regards,

Anna Farley
Customer Support Team
Intrade Exchange Operations




And the funny part - the SAME response from TradeSports - but without
the name

Re: Site(s) down‏
From: Tradesports Help (he...@tradesports.com)
Sent: Fri 8/29/08 11:15 AM
Reply-to: he...@tradesports.com


Dear Todd,

Thank you for your enquiry. Please accept our sincere apologies for
these intermittent access issues. Our IT department are currently
working to resolve this. We will have full access as soon as
possible.
Kind regards,

Customer Support Team
Tradesports Exchange Operations

Byrne Hobart

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Aug 29, 2008, 11:40:52 AM8/29/08
to Predictio...@googlegroups.com
I think the best thing prediction markets could do is to open a market-failure market. Being able to bet that Intrade will be down on specific days would be a nice hedge, and they could make money by taking the opposite side of the bet before investing more in IT, e.g. they buy 1000 contracts at $8, which pay out at $10 if Intrade doesn't have any outages during election week. They then spend $1000 on a new server, and pay for it by selling their previous contracts at $9 based on the server's effect on the odds.

There isn't necessarily enough money in this to fully subsidize all of the investments they'd need, but there's enough to offset the cost of those investments enough to make a difference.

2008/8/29 Todd <todd...@aol.com>

vega...@gmail.com

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Aug 29, 2008, 11:45:57 AM8/29/08
to Prediction Markets
What was that about market manipulation?

:-)

On Aug 29, 11:40 am, "Byrne Hobart" <bhob...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think the best thing prediction markets could do is to open a
> market-failure market. Being able to bet that Intrade will be down on
> specific days would be a nice hedge, *and* they could make money by taking
> the opposite side of the bet before investing more in IT, e.g. they buy 1000
> contracts at $8, which pay out at $10 if Intrade doesn't have any outages
> during election week. They then spend $1000 on a new server, and pay for it
> by selling their previous contracts at $9 based on the server's effect on
> the odds.
>
> There isn't necessarily enough money in this to fully subsidize all of the
> investments they'd need, but there's enough to offset the cost of those
> investments enough to make a difference.
>
> 2008/8/29 Todd <todd7...@aol.com>
>
>
>
> > Here is the response from the "live" help - hours after the message is
> > sent, and well after the trading was done.
>
> > From: Intrade Help <h...@intrade.com>
> > Date: Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 11:14 AM
> > Subject: Re: Disgrace
>
> > Thank you for your enquiry. Please accept our sincere apologies for
> > these intermittent access issues. Our IT department are currently
> > working to resolve this. We will have full access as soon as possible.
>
> > Please let us know if we can help you further.
>
> > Kind regards,
>
> > Anna Farley
> > Customer Support Team
> > Intrade Exchange Operations
>
> > And the funny part - the SAME response from TradeSports - but without
> > the name
>
> > Re: Site(s) down‏
> > From: Tradesports Help (h...@tradesports.com)
> > Sent: Fri 8/29/08 11:15 AM
> > Reply-to: h...@tradesports.com

Todd

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Aug 29, 2008, 11:49:25 AM8/29/08
to Prediction Markets
Good idea Byrne. Maybe John Delaney will listen.

I feel bad for all those people with open orders.

If the Net result for the market makers is positive, there will be no
unwind. If the market makers take a net loss, there will be many
upset users as results get unwound.

Cant wait to here the spin that gets put on this one. This is not the
first time either. Intrade was down on the 22nd for a while,
Tradesports goes down during the super bowl - But the leaders... the
innovators do NOTHING to correct the problems. Alarming.

On Aug 29, 11:40 am, "Byrne Hobart" <bhob...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think the best thing prediction markets could do is to open a
> market-failure market. Being able to bet that Intrade will be down on
> specific days would be a nice hedge, *and* they could make money by taking
> the opposite side of the bet before investing more in IT, e.g. they buy 1000
> contracts at $8, which pay out at $10 if Intrade doesn't have any outages
> during election week. They then spend $1000 on a new server, and pay for it
> by selling their previous contracts at $9 based on the server's effect on
> the odds.
>
> There isn't necessarily enough money in this to fully subsidize all of the
> investments they'd need, but there's enough to offset the cost of those
> investments enough to make a difference.
>
> 2008/8/29 Todd <todd7...@aol.com>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Here is the response from the "live" help - hours after the message is
> > sent, and well after the trading was done.
>
> > From: Intrade Help <h...@intrade.com>
> > Date: Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 11:14 AM
> > Subject: Re: Disgrace
>
> > Thank you for your enquiry. Please accept our sincere apologies for
> > these intermittent access issues. Our IT department are currently
> > working to resolve this. We will have full access as soon as possible.
>
> > Please let us know if we can help you further.
>
> > Kind regards,
>
> > Anna Farley
> > Customer Support Team
> > Intrade Exchange Operations
>
> > And the funny part - the SAME response from TradeSports - but without
> > the name
>
> > Re: Site(s) down‏
> > From: Tradesports Help (h...@tradesports.com)
> > Sent: Fri 8/29/08 11:15 AM
> > Reply-to: h...@tradesports.com
> > > Todd- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Todd

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Aug 30, 2008, 2:55:59 AM8/30/08
to Prediction Markets
Great to see John Delaney recognized the problem. No message here, no
message on Intrade. Just pretended like it didnt happen.

The leader of the Prediction Market revolution... when the site isnt
crashed due to traffic.... Intrade.
> > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

John Delaney, CEO, Intrade.com

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Aug 30, 2008, 4:32:25 AM8/30/08
to Prediction Markets
Dear Todd,

As you identified we did experience a massive surge in traffic that
did cause disruption to our service for a period. I am sorry for this
disruption.

The time of day that this surge happened was particularly unusual. The
surge was approximately 10 times higher then the normal "high" for
that time of day. While we do have the ability to handle surge
traffic, and have done in the past, for reasons yet to be fully
uncovered or explained to my satisfaction, we did not cope with the
recent surge nearly as well as I would like.

From reports that I have been given, our platform was not under-
performing for “hours and hours” as you suggest.

We do try very hard to meet the expectations of all our customers,
those who pay fees and those who come to Intrade for information only.
We don’t always succeed.

I understand, but would be very sorry to hear, you may wish to cease
using our services. Should you decide to close your account, and I
hope that will not be the case, please contact me directly on
john.d...@intrade.com and I will personally ensure that our final
services to you are the very best we can offer.

I have taken the liberty of giving this entire thread a 4* rating, and
copying it to our management team, who are aware of the issues.

Sincerely,

John Delaney
CEO
Intrade.com
Intrade.net (in beta)

Todd

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Aug 30, 2008, 10:19:18 AM8/30/08
to Prediction Markets
Dear John,

I really think that your response is missing the underlying issues.

If you check response times on the "live" help emails, you will see
that the site was down a little over 2 hours. Im sure this data
should be readily available from the limited amounts of trades that
were on the books during this period also. The site did NOT go back up
until the RepVP contract was settled and there was no more interest.
So It would seem to me the issue was not fixed by your IT team as the
live help email may have suggested, but was only rectified because
there was very limited interest in Intrade once the decision was made.

Im not sure this "resolution" would satisfy me as a trader. Knowing it
once again was swept under the servers, and that instead of solving
the issue, the Im sorry to hear you may be closing you account line
was dropped on a customer. This is not the first time that line has
been used. It was used by Dan Laffan, one of your employees, when I
showed him that your company was expiring your hourly financial
contract at a random number of seconds after each hour, as opposed on
the hour. He chose not to use the correct information, after numerous
conversations with him.

But you wont find any of those old messages in the Intrade forums.
They have all been removed. When Intrade converted over the forums,
you chose to remove any messages that against the grain. Any messages
where your traders addressed issues, cited problems, and even disputes
- removed. In some of those messages from many, many months ago, also
addressed were server traffic issues during peak volume times.
Tradesports going down in the middle of big sporting events was
unquestionably addressed. I may even have the old message. But I know
the standard response about Intrade and Tradesports being two seperate
companies. Which again appears to be more deception. The two sites
went down in tandem yesterday. The live help emails were responded to
one minute apart, and the only change to the copy and paste was the
Tradesports/Intrade. Maybe it is just a coincidence that the servers,
and live help are still on the same system. But in case you havent
realized it, your company forgot to change their bank account. The
checks that I receive from Tradesports and Intrade are drawn off the
exact same bank account #. Withdrawals on the same day from the two
sites will yield checks numbers that may be in sequence or very close
to it.

Your customers must be very reassured to learn that the problem has
been immediately addressed the same way that prior problems have been
addressed. By "respectfully" suggesting the closure of an account.
Personally, it would have been more comforting to learn that new
servers were beeing added immediately to better take care of the needs
of your customers. The US election is 2 months away, with the Super
Bowl 3 months after that. But the issue is still not taken seriously.

I will pass on the opportunity to contact you personally, as I have
done this in the past because my emails have gone ignored. Maybe the
emails regarding incorrect contract expiry data, servers problems,
market making issues, etc that received thoudands of views and
hundreds of responses, before you removed them from your forum, got
stuck in your spam box.

Another great example of the Intrade/Tradesports mentality. We don't
need you as a customer if you address problems. Its a shame that you
dont realize what its like to be on the other side of these issues.
Maybe if you took the time to look at them, and address them, then
your traders would call you the leader in the industry, as opposed to
labeling yourself.

Yet another email thread that will create no change.

Todd
Intrade/Tradesports Trader

On Aug 30, 4:32 am, "John Delaney, CEO, Intrade.com"
<john.dela...@intrade.com> wrote:
> Dear Todd,
>
> As you identified we did experience a massive surge in traffic that
> did cause disruption to our service for a period.  I am sorry for this
> disruption.
>
> The time of day that this surge happened was particularly unusual. The
> surge was approximately 10 times higher then the normal "high" for
> that time of day. While we do have the ability to handle surge
> traffic, and have done in the past, for reasons yet to be fully
> uncovered or explained to my satisfaction, we did not cope with the
> recent surge nearly as well as I would like.
>
> From reports that I have been given, our platform was not under-
> performing for “hours and hours” as you suggest.
>
> We do try very hard to meet the expectations of all our customers,
> those who pay fees and those who come to Intrade for information only.
> We don’t always succeed.
>
> I understand, but would be very sorry to hear, you may wish to cease
> using our services. Should you decide to close your account, and I
> hope that will not be the case, please contact me directly on
> john.dela...@intrade.com and I will personally ensure that our final

John Delaney, CEO, Intrade.com

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Aug 30, 2008, 11:35:54 AM8/30/08
to Prediction Markets

Dear Todd,

Apologies if I did not address your issues adequately.

I have been told the problems were not server related but bandwidth.
As mentioned earlier, I do not have all the answers to my questions
yet as to the apparent bandwidth issue. I do not expect any additional
information until Monday. On receipt I am happy to post additional
information I receive on Intrade bandwidth issues here should this
community wish to see it. You will of course get a copy of any
further information or explanations related to this issue directly to
you and you may of course post it here at your discretion.

As you note, with the election just over 2 months away we are
expecting a significant increase in traffic. We have deployed
additional resources already and are very confident that we will be
able to provide a very good service if traffic is circa 15 times the
“normal” peak traffic. However, we cannot and therefore don’t
guarantee that our service will perform the way we would like at all
times and in all eventualities, some of which are outside our control.
Over the last year approximately our platform has operated normally
99.976% of the time. I wish it was 100% as I know you and many others
do also.


Sincerely,

John Delaney

Emile Servan-Schreiber

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Aug 30, 2008, 11:45:40 AM8/30/08
to Predictio...@googlegroups.com
In defense of Intrade/Tradesports, it should be noted that even the most sophisticated, well funded, and professionally trading exchanges periodically experience technical glitches that bring them down momentarily. The links below describe such incidents involving Nasdaq and NYSE, both within the last decade. The fact is that anything relying on computers is never 100% reliable, there's an irreducible bit of voodoo in the machine.

Glitch halts trading on NYSE
http://articles.latimes.com/1998/oct/27/business/fi-36547

Amid outages, Nasdaq debuts new system
http://news.cnet.com/Amid-outages,-Nasdaq-debuts-new-system/2100-1017_3-269833.html

Furthermore, experienced prediction traders know full well that these VP contracts belong to the worse type of contracts to be trading, because the outcome is decided secretly by a very small set of people. At best the decision is random, so there's nothing to predict. At worse, you're setting yourself to be victimized by inside traders, or people who are informed just before you are, or who have a faster finger on the trigger. Except for insiders, no reasonable person should be caught trading such "sudden death" contracts.

--Emile
www.newsfutures.com

Milton Pedraza

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Aug 30, 2008, 11:53:01 AM8/30/08
to Predictio...@googlegroups.com
For all the harsh critics of any growing industry, suggest you go read up on
Complexity Theory and see how nonlinear and messy life is. And if you have
not ever had a screw-up, then you have definitely not bet very large in your
life.

I do suggest, however, that when you own a business and something goes
wrong, you as the CEO immediately take full responsibility, admit the
problem, apologize and fix it fast.

Milton Pedraza
CEO
Luxury Institute, LLC
115 East 57th Street, 11th Floor
New York, NY 10022
Office: 646-792-2669
Cell: 917-657-4988
mped...@luxuryinstitute.com
www.luxuryinstitute.com


Please be advised that your use of a Luxury Institute or Luxury Board
document constitutes your agreement to (i) use the content under a limited
license only for your own internal purposes, and (ii) not disclose, publish
or otherwise make public or provide the content, in whole or in part, to any
third person or entity without the prior written consent of The Luxury
Institute, LLC. The content is and remains at all times the exclusive
intellectual property of The Luxury Institute, LLC. Copyright C 2008, The
Luxury Institute, LLC.

Tony Kolton

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Aug 30, 2008, 12:08:57 PM8/30/08
to Predictio...@googlegroups.com
John,

We can really help you!

Our time series database, HISTORIS, has been found to be so FAULT
TOLERANT and able to handle hundreds of terabytes of data, that GE uses
us to monitor nuclear power plants!

Please go to www.historisdatabase.com, and call me to discuss a free
trial.

You won't be going down again if you use Historis!

All the best,

Tony

(312) 925-7316

-----Original Message-----
From: Predictio...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:Predictio...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Delaney,
CEO, Intrade.com
Sent: Saturday, August 30, 2008 10:36 AM
To: Prediction Markets
Subject: Re: Prediction Market Leader Lays an Egg on big morning
announcement



vega...@gmail.com

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Aug 30, 2008, 1:40:09 PM8/30/08
to Milton Pedraza, to...@lim.com, Predictio...@googlegroups.com

Intrade shouldn't be expected to be perfect, any more than any other
company. But I'm not buying this peak traffic issue at all.

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/intrade.com

The highest volume their site ever sees is a rounding error to
anything like NASDAQ or Google or literally thousands of other sites.
Those that have extremely high bandwidth needs and also the need for
fault-tolerance because real money (or lives) are at stake have
redundant systems that are constantly and automatically monitored and
tested. Given Intrade's modest traffic even at the highest and most
sudden peaks, there really is no excuse for outages or slow
performance to ever be more than momentary.

So, why doesn't Intrade, which is trusted with real-money transactions
and is watched by traders, academics and journalists around the globe,
use industry-standard systems for high peak bandwidth availability and
server capacity? Too expensive?

Being up 99.976% is is 100% meaningless. The question is what
percentage of the instances of heavy peak traffic lead to slow (or no)
site response? There is little harm if the site has issues at most
random times when nothing special is going on or when, for instance,
most traders are sleeping. Heck, you intentionally take your site
offline for an hour every single day to manually count your pennies or
something (that 4% daily downtime apparently doesn't figure in your
uptime estimate, but that's ok).

It's exactly at the peak traffic times that you cannot fail; that's of
course when it matters, and when Intrade seems to regularly have
problems. Even predictable peaks such as election nights and
championship sporting events have regularly led to poor performance.
Intrade has had a real problem with this for as long as I've been
aware of them and they have not yet addressed it adequately.

As to suggesting, again, that an apparently heavy trader and longtime
customer close his account... shame on you. You are surely aware that
the rare person who speaks up like that is speaking for many other
customers who do not bother to say anything because they expect (know)
that their words will fall on deaf ears or fear retaliation. He is
your canary in the coal mine. You should be embracing him and using
him to identify and resolve issues that affect other current,
prospective (and past) customers. The arrogance of saying, in effect,
"we're the only game in town; shut up and be happy with what we give
you or go away," is stunningly short-sighted.

- lucy

On Aug 30, 11:53 am, Milton Pedraza <mpedr...@luxuryinstitute.com>
wrote:


> For all the harsh critics of any growing industry, suggest you go read up on
> Complexity Theory and see how nonlinear and messy life is. And if you have
> not ever had a screw-up, then you have definitely not bet very large in your
> life.
>
> I do suggest, however, that when you own a business and something goes
> wrong, you as the CEO immediately take full responsibility, admit the
> problem, apologize and fix it fast.
>
> Milton Pedraza
> CEO
> Luxury Institute, LLC
> 115 East 57th Street, 11th Floor
> New York, NY 10022
> Office: 646-792-2669
> Cell: 917-657-4988

> mpedr...@luxuryinstitute.comwww.luxuryinstitute.com

Johnny Sheridan

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Aug 30, 2008, 5:38:08 PM8/30/08
to Prediction Markets
Lucy,

I'm not sure using Alexa as the source of traffic data here is
entirely reasonable. Alexa gather its ranking-data from toolbars that
only certain people install; the ratings are fairly questionable in a
general sense, and epecially questionable when you're talking about
outlier-traffic events (such as the change in traffic an online
prediction market experiences due to news-making events). Intrade, I
think, is a sufficiently unique website that there would be a pretty
compelling argument to be made that its users are far from represented
by the sample obtained through Alexa's toolbar installations.

--Johnny

Bert70

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Aug 30, 2008, 5:52:48 PM8/30/08
to Prediction Markets

John,

As you know that the figure of 99.9% of success rate you gave me does
not really mean anything to most intrader users since the the 0.1%
chance of failure will certainly happen in the peak times & the most
critical period.

We dont know whether 10 times capacity of peak times or 20 times
capacity of peak times will be enough. I think as a CEO you can know
easily how many President contracts have been exchanged and how many
traders own them -- and then design Intrade to be fail proof in such a
way that if all traders who hold these contract will be online and
start selling -- your site will be able to serve these people.

Look John, you are the captain of the ship - if there is not enough
room, then why would you continue accepting traders? If you are
continuing to accept registration then you must insure that you will
able to serve all of the traders. After all, we are all your
costumers. I would be surprised if you can't get handle of your own
costumer or will say 'sorry, but there may be 0.1% chance we cant
serve you'. If you cant provide service 100% to all of us then
definitely you should stop accepting people and better improve your
service first.

November the 4th will be the day where all Intraders are looking
forward -- if it is by coincidence that 0.1% failure happen again on
that day during the most critical time -- I am sure that I might not
be the only one who will lose confidence on Intrade completely.

On a positive note, I am very pleased with you personally handle this
issue on your own and speak to us directly - we cant get more excited
with you addressing this issue and that you are very receptive to
complain and has shown effort to resolve this issue.

John Delaney, CEO, Intrade.com

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Aug 31, 2008, 5:51:46 AM8/31/08
to Prediction Markets
Dear Bert70,

The most likely reason for sub-par performance of the Intrade platform
due to activity greater than 10 times our normal peak is not trading
volumes, or active traders, but people accessing Intrade for
information only.

While fee paying trading members and information users are both
important and valuable to Intrade, and we try really hard to service
both groups well, fee paying members must get preferential treatment
particularly where trading services are concerned.

I hope to announce in the next 2 weeks to trading members a “members
only” access point to the Intrade trading platform. I have not
disclosed this previously as the exact timing is still somewhat
uncertain. This access point to the trading platform **should** not be
negatively impacted by the likely massive increase in traffic we are
predicting from information only users of Intrade.

Yes the service we offer all is my personal responsibility. When
things go wrong, as they too often do, the responsibility is mine
first and foremost. I promise you I am very serious about Intrade and
my responsibilities.

Sincerely,

John Delaney
CEO
Intrade

Peter C. McCluskey

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Aug 31, 2008, 12:19:59 PM8/31/08
to Predictio...@googlegroups.com
ej...@newsfutures.com (Emile Servan-Schreiber) writes:
>Furthermore, experienced prediction traders know full well that these VP
>contracts belong to the worse type of contracts to be trading, because the
>outcome is decided secretly by a very small set of people. At best the
>decision is random, so there's nothing to predict. At worse, you're setting

That's an exaggeration. There are ways to make educated guesses that some
candidates don't make any sense as VP choices. There are often ways to figure
out that some contracts are trading too high due to long shot bias (especially
when, as has sometimes happened on Intrade, the probabilities add up to
something silly like 130%). I made money betting against Huckabee and Fiorina.
The people who thought they could trade on the last minute rumors were
mostly fools (see an experiment done by Paul Andreassen where subjects
trading stocks did worse if they saw a constant stream of news than if
they saw no news once they started trading).

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter McCluskey | sleepiness is responsible for far more deaths on the
www.bayesianinvestor.com| roads than alcohol or drugs - Paul Martin

vega...@gmail.com

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Aug 31, 2008, 12:28:18 PM8/31/08
to Prediction Markets

Johnny,

I'm sure you're right that Alexa is a horribly inaccurate measure, but
I doubt it's off by enough to change the underlying point. Is
Intrade's traffic even vaguely comparable to Google, Amazon, Citibank,
eBay, PayPal or a host of others? No. The CEO is welcome to prove me
wrong if he likes.

The just-announced plan to separate trader and window-shopper traffic
seems like a good one, as it makes sense for those with money at risk
to have priority over those just looking for information. Does it mean
that the site will be stable and fast at peak times for traders? That
depends on whether the peak availability of bandwidth and processing
power is much higher than in the past or whether Intrade continues to
try to skate by with just enough capacity (which then never turns out
to be enough).

In short, the only reason to have availability problems is the
unwillingness to pay for the solution. Segregating traffic will help,
but unless the management mindset changes from reacting to outages to
staying ahead of outages there will be future outages and poor
performance.

Even if I were entirely wrong about all of the above I would still
stand by what I said about telling fee-paying traders to "take it or
leave it."

By the way, Emile's argument is utterly bizarre. Is he defending
Intrade by arguing that they are suborning irresponsible trading? That
traders should be grateful that poor site performance prevented them
from making stupid trades? Has Emile ever been a successful trader or
is he just making this stuff up?

- lucy

Peter C. McCluskey

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Aug 31, 2008, 1:16:12 PM8/31/08
to Predictio...@googlegroups.com
vega...@gmail.com (vega...@gmail.com) writes:
>By the way, Emile's argument is utterly bizarre. Is he defending
>Intrade by arguing that they are suborning irresponsible trading? That

It's normal (possibly unavoidable) for financial exchanges to facilitate
irresponsible trading (see the No Trade Theorem).

>traders should be grateful that poor site performance prevented them
>from making stupid trades? Has Emile ever been a successful trader or

I'm a successful trader who's saying a majority of traders ought to
be grateful (but won't be - if they realized they ought to be grateful,
they wouldn't have been trying to trade then). A minority of traders
are sensibly upset.

Emile Servan-Schreiber

unread,
Aug 31, 2008, 2:12:12 PM8/31/08
to Predictio...@googlegroups.com

 vega...@gmail.com (vega...@gmail.com) writes:
>By the way, Emile's argument is utterly bizarre. Is he defending
>Intrade by arguing that they are suborning irresponsible trading? That


Let me expand a little:

1) I feel no pain for traders of these secret-decisions sudden-death VP contracts. If it wasn't an outage that did them in, it would have been the simple fact that someone else with inside information or shorter reaction times got to Intrade faster. In fact, if they could not access the site, it was probably because other people got there faster to clean up the order book.

2) The Intrade VP contracts may have presented some trading opportunities, as Peter notes, but in my opinion they failed to address the core issue, so they were utterly uninteresting information-wise. Given the diversity breakthrough on the Democratic side, the interesting issue in McCain's VP choice was not whether he would choose this or that particular person, but whether or not he'd reach out to inject, for the first time ever, some diversity in the Republican ticket. On NewsFutures, we captured that with a single contract on whether or not the GOP ticket would again be two white guys. I wish Intrade had proposed a similar contract, which I'd have gladly traded. The reason I'd have traded this contract rather than Intrade's VP contracts is because, as a non-insider political junkie, I feel that I have an informed opinion of what general sort of VP-profile McCain has to go for, even though I know I'm clueless on the specifics of the myriad individual possibilities. My guess is that had Intrade proposed a "2 white guys ticket" contract, it would have generated much more volume because it would have attracted much more traders like me who simply chose to stay away from the existing VP contracts.

3) By the way, the NewsFutures contract predicted 2 white guys on the GOP ticket with 80% probability for several months, until it shot up to 90% in August. So McCain's choice was indeed unexpected. (I'd say foolish - he should have beefed up his economy creds instead.)

4) And yes, according to my Intrade balance, I am a successful trader, so far - it's been a few years. Playing the game is essential to get deep insights into the multi-faceted power of prediction markets and their potential benefits to individuals and society. There's only so much you can think through without experiencing it first-hand, as a trader.

--Emile

Bert70

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Sep 2, 2008, 10:40:48 AM9/2/08
to Prediction Markets

Emile,

Regardless of how much you elaborated your position - I could only say
one thing to you, 'your logic is flawed'.
How the VP market works and its nature has nothing to do to justify
Intrade being out of service.

Intrade being out of service could happen then in November 4th if Todd
didnt raise this concern in the first place and John Delaney not take
this seriously.

Look Emile, I also came out winning from REP VP market but I still
feel the enormous stress of not being able to log in to the site and
follow whats going on with my portfolio. Maybe you are one of few
traders who feel superior, well informed, etc so that you dont need to
check your portfolio in the most critical moments. But for most of us,
we do need to have access to Intrade.

Emile, I dont care if you have been winning and we dont ask you for
your sympathy for loosing traders (Even loosing traders arent begging
for your sympathy). In fact, we dont even need you being here talking
non-sense trying to preach about 'the sudden death' nature of VP
contract and thus justifying Intrade being out of service. Your post
is despicable.

The reason we even bother to post here is that we want Intrade to
improve so this kind of black out period wouldnt happen again in the
future. Even John Delaney as Intrade CEO admitted that this is an area
they will improve by planning on releasing that members only access
point for the upcoming election.


--Bert





Jason Ruspini

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Sep 2, 2008, 8:13:27 PM9/2/08
to Prediction Markets
Consider the massive barriers to capitalization:
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/fundwatch-vanguard-gambling-suit-met/story.aspx?guid=%7B7117D0F7-2CC9-4B5F-9219-8753E8A8363C%7D&dist=hplatest
"By engaging in illegal gambling in the U.S., those companies became
illegal gambling companies"

Maybe if the exchange were better capitalized, this wouldn't happen?
I can see John's frustration, especially if the outage was triggered
by people looking for free information.

Since we all agree that it is bad for exchanges to suffer outages and
that they should try to avoid them, maybe re-focusing on legal reform
is the most productive thing for this group to do?

Jason Ruspini

Todd

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Sep 4, 2008, 12:57:00 AM9/4/08
to Prediction Markets
Bottom line - this is NOT the first time.

Despite what Intrade would like you to believe - they are still one in
the same with Tradesports. Same servers (Both TS and IT were down for
the VP announcement), same help emails ( see above), same bank account
# on deposit and withdrawal checks. If you need proof, I can provide
this you photos.

This same type of problem happens for big sporting events. And I
doubt anyone is looking for information in the middle of the
SuperBowl. It has happened to TS and Intrade on prior occasions. They
have been notifed and the response is always the same - Our IT
department is looking into it.

As far as being operation 99.9% of the time... Bert70 said it best
above "As you know that the figure of 99.9% of success rate you gave
me does
not really mean anything to most intrader users since the the 0.1%
chance of failure will certainly happen in the peak times & the most
critical period. "

If you plan to grow your business - you need to give it the capicty to
grow. And when that capicty is maxed out - add more. They had the
warning signs - and now its panic time.

There has been a VIP link in the past. I had that link. It was down
also. This is not a new resolution - but just another mask of the
problem.

Problems repeat themselves with this company. Like the problem I had a
year back. Hourly DOW close contracts, ie Dow +25 11am - the expiry
for the contarct says the first print after the 11:00:00 hour.
Problem is the data they were using was completely random. The source
they had sometimes would show 11:00:02 - but the next hour the expiry
would be at 12:00:05 and then 1:00:03. On 3 occasions in a 3 month
period, I was able to provide them a more exact data feed that had an
exact expiry - not an average. On all three of those occasions, my
position became worthless - due to a random expiry. Alot can happen
in 4 seconds in the DOW. When Intrade supposively broke away from
Tradesports - they moved the forums over. Break downs and links to
all this information was in the forum. But surprise - they didnt
convert over any message that questioned their expiry procedures,
server down time, market making, and controversial decsion. Rather
than address the problem - they hope it goes away.

And the best part; after providing them with better data feed and a
way to obtain it - I was told if I dont like the current method - they
were reluctantly suggesting that I close my account. Funny, I think
that was mentioned somewhere above in this thread for this problem.

I have made many attempts to show them how a customer views their
service. If they listened to the mention I had made about site lag
and log on issues during peak sporting events a while ago - this may
have been addressed already

http://www.midasoracle.org/2008/08/31/intrade-tradesports-servers/
<-- At that link you will find all of my past emails to Tradesports/
Intrade and the responses from them. Scroll down to where it says
Previous and you can see each email and the responses.

Since my first post, I have been contacted by John Delaney via email,
and have responded.

Hopefully - maybe this time they will get one of the issues rectified.

Todd

On Sep 2, 8:13 pm, Jason Ruspini <rusp...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Consider the massive barriers to capitalization:http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/fundwatch-vanguard-gambling-sui...

John Delaney, CEO, Intrade.com

unread,
Sep 4, 2008, 1:34:20 AM9/4/08
to Prediction Markets
Todd,

Concerning Intrade and Tradesports, as many know Intrade and
Tradesports were once owned by the same legal entity, Trade Exchange
Network.

About 18 months ago, Trade Exchange Network legally deconsolidated and
divested Intrade and Tradesports. Intrade and Tradesports have been
for the last 18 months or so separate legal entities, legally
domiciled in separate legal entities, with separate shareholders etc.

However, since separation, Intrade and Tradesports have both retained
services from their previous parent company Trade Exchange Network.
Hence same addresses on certain services, and same impact on Intrade
and Tradesports if the service provider has an issue.

Where Intrade is concerned, the services it receives from Trade
Exchange Network have reduced and will reduce further until in the no
too distant future it will not rely on Trade Exchange Network at all.

As mentioned earlier, I will be offline for a little while due to
travel commitments, but will check this thread when I am back online.

Regards,

John

Joel Elconin

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Sep 4, 2008, 8:22:43 PM9/4/08
to Predictio...@googlegroups.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Delaney, CEO, Intrade.com" <john.d...@intrade.com>
To: "Prediction Markets" <Predictio...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2008 1:34 AM
Subject: Re: Prediction Market Leader Lays an Egg on big morning
announcement


>

Todd

unread,
Sep 5, 2008, 10:50:59 PM9/5/08
to Prediction Markets
Understood... sure retain the same live help - the know how to run the
system, same servers, etc... Makes sense.

But a 1.5 years later - the same bank account?? Thats what made me
wonder.

On Sep 4, 1:34�am, "John Delaney, CEO, Intrade.com"

sftweeindieguy

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Sep 8, 2008, 11:04:59 PM9/8/08
to Prediction Markets
Maybe this would be a good time to convene Intrade's famous
Arbitration Committee.


:::::::crickets::::::::
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