Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Obama's Intrade Odds For Re-election Goes Bust

Obama's Intrade Odds For Re-election Goes Bust

INTRADE is a platform where you make predictions by buying and selling shares on the outcome of real-world events. For example, a markets currently available is:

--> Barack Obama to be re-elected President in 2012, Yes or No?

In other words, it is a type of poll where people don't just answer a pollster's question, they actually put their money where their mouth is: they put money down to back up their opinion or prediction. 

Since January 2009, there has been an incredible correlation between Obama's INTRADE odds of being re-elected, and the S&P 500 index (see chart above).

But the correlation broke down badly in early June of 2012 (see shaded portion of above plot), just around the time of Obama's hoof in mouth speech where he said: "You didn't build that!". Since then, there has been a large gap between the Obama INTRADE odds, and the S&P index.

This does not auger well for Obama's re-election, and indicates increasing odds that Romney will be the next President of the United States.

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