More on Inkling

I'm really growing to like this site. Here are some additional comments after playing with it for a bit.

* Initially I thought that each trader's stake was initially too low, and then I realised that it was because I was trading in the US House of Reps market. Instead of being on a $0-$100 scale, you are trading on the number of seats one party (in this case the Democrats) will hold after the 2006 elections. These positions are in the $200-$250 range, which means that if you have relatively strong feelings about the matter you'll likely use up your whole stake just in that market. Now the company could use a scaling factor of even 50% so that a belief that Democrats will hold 210 seats would be expressed as $105, but that could also hurt the user friendliness and easy comprehension of the markets.

* As a political junkie, I was glad they put up a market for the US Senate as well. For the opposite reason as the House of Reps, this could be a great liquid market, since the payout will be in the $40-$60 range.

* Prices seem to be very volatile. My assumption is that this is because the market is thin. When I took a stake in the US House of Reps market, my trade made the price jump by nearly $20!

* It's beta, so some things are a little buggy. At one point I didn't have much available cash, so I tried to cash out on some short selling that had gone in my favor. When I tried to make the trade, I was told that "You only have enough money to buy -58 shares". It's something for their team to work out, but a funny error message all the same.

I'm still really impressed by the user interface. I think it will be much more intuitive for people new to trading and markets in general.

On a final note, if you're interested in Prediction Markets, please sign up for the Google Group. It's growing every day and a number of interesting people post there.

Cheers for now,
Jed