Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Prices in our VOTE markets

David Farrar at Kiwiblog maintains a running time and size weighted average of public polls. Let's compare current polling figures with our prices (at current high bid, 9:15 am):

PartyPollsiPredict
National47.446
ACT1.93.468
Maori2.44
Labour35.340.13
Green7.77.968
Maori2.44
NZ First34.013


The PM markets suggest a 76.26% chance of National leading the next government.

If we run the current market prices through the spreadsheet, I get a 45.4% chance of a National-led government. But, if I use the poll numbers instead (and combine it with polling estimates of 4 Maori electorate seats rather than 6), I get 75.17 -- pretty close to the current trading price in PM.National. Now, it's somewhat dodgy putting polling numbers into the spreadsheet because the variances then don't make sense, but something's wrong here. As a first guess, I'd say Labour is 3-5 cents too high in the VS markets.

I can believe National being lower and ACT being higher than the polling numbers, netting out to about the same total. I can believe Labour being a bit lower than the polling numbers and the Greens a bit higher. I can't see Labour on 40. But if the folks trading here are happy with Labour on 40, then PM.National just isn't worth 76.

I'm going to short VOTE.LABOUR if prices haven't moved before the US election contract settles and I get my $132 in Obama payout.

Addendum Lots of volatility this afternoon in VOTE.NATIONAL and VOTE.LABOUR. I saw VOTE.NATIONAL as high as 52; it's since dropped back down to 46.67. If I had cash balances, I'd be seeding both sides of the order book!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

While most have been watching the US election results, something very unusal has been happening on the Vote.National and Vote.Labour stocks. For a while the market price for Vote.National was over 0.56 and Vote.Labour 0.30.

Looks like a National supporter has spent up large

Big opportunity for profit :-)

Matt Burgess said...

Indeed!