FAQ
General
What is predictX?
First things first: PredictX is for free and operated for academic purposes. No fees in any form, no real-money, no worries.
PredictX is a non-commercial crowdsourcing platform that allows users to create, trade and share contracts on future events.
Generally speaking it is a hybrid of derivative trading (the outcome of events), skill gaming (no real money is traded) and youtube (everybody creates content).
We provide the platform and make sure that appropriate events are uploaded, trading goes smoothly and settle the outcome. Anything else is up to you.
Aha, tell me more.
Users create events that either occur or do not occur (e.g. "Will Marihuana be legal in the European Union before 2020?").
People trade virtual money on this event before the outcome is known. Those who believe the event is more likely than the current propability (e.g. 68%) buy "X will occur" contracts. Users who think the event occurs with a lower propability buy " X ill not occur" contracts. By buying and selling contracts not only the market price but also your market value of held contracts changes. For instance if you have bought "X will occur" contracts and the propability that X in fact occurs rises you can either sell your trading position or wait until expiry. See our betting rules for examples and strategies.
As soon as the outcome is known each held contract pays off $1 or $0 depending on whether the prediction was correct (= $1 per contract) or incorrect (=$0 per contract).
The user with the highest net worth of trading funds (which only change through predictions and contract creations) receives $100 in cash each month
What's the point of this?
It has been proven that many individuals predict the future better than single experts. This collective wisdom, however, requires effective aggregation of dispersed beliefs/knowledge. Prediction Markets have been around for about 30 years (mostly for academic research) and have predicted countless events accurately. Unfortunately, existing markets are technical, boring and do not allow users to create events. So we created a new one with all the features we were missing in existing platforms.
How can I participate?
In order to start trading you need to sign up. We have made this process as simple as possible: You only need to enter your e-mail adress, choose a password and agree with our Terms & Conditions. After 20 seconds you are ready to create and trade virtual money.
What happens after I have signed up?
You instantly receive $1000 virtual funds and can start creating, trading and sharing events (facebook / twitter). Your current amount of trading funds is shown in the left side of the header.
How do I increase my trading funds?
There are 2 ways to enhance your trading funds/ net worth:
Trading: Once you have bought a contract you can either sell it at any time or wait until the event outcome is known. In both cases correct predictions will increase your available trading funds
Creating New Contracts: For each traded contract of an event that you have created you receive 5% of the trading volume. For example, if $10.000 are traded you receive $500. Contract creation costs $50 in order to ensure that only "good" events are created. In order to earn more trading fees than a new contract costs you should ask yourself whether the event will attract much trading activity.
Why would I strive for maximizing virtual funds?
The best performing users receive $100 each month. That'll buy you 30 beers, a tankful or half a netbook (depending on where you live). Also, you will be leading the user ranking and gain reputation in the predictX community.
What are you? A company? A research project?
We are two ambitious students who need data for their PhDs. In order to make the project more fun for us and the users we additionally built the best prediction market platform worldwide.The good news are: We do not need to pay employees, a fancy office or take clients to the strip club. Therefore we do not want your money. Just your predictions.
Trading
Which events can I trade?
There are 3 types of events on predictX (displayed on the menu above), 2 of which you can trade.
Active Events: Events that have been approved, and that have not yet occured.
Pending Events: New events that do not yet have a market price. You can disclose offers at any price. As soon as $100 in trading volume has been generated (by at least 5 different users) the orders are cleared and the event becomes an active one. Note that orders made in this phase are compulsory and automatically cleared as soon as the contract is active. In case the event does not generate the required amount of trades or is dismissed by an admin your order is not cleared and your funds remain unchanged.
Expired Events: Events that have occured already. Surprisingly, these events cannot be traded. They can however be used for research purposes.
How do I find interesting events within one category?
Filters: There are 2 filters to make sure you see the very events you are most interested in.
On the left side you can choose countries and/or categories that you want to show in the list on the right side. The event list refreshes automatically if you choose your selection (Google stole this technology from us for their "instant" functionality...maybe)
On the top you can sort the list of events by certain criteria like expiry date, trading volume and propability.
Using these 2 filters wisely makes life very simple. "I only want to see events taking place in the German Economy sorted by trading volume"
Search Engine: Type some keywords and hit "Search". Simsalabim.
Related Events: If you view an event you see other contracts from the same country / category.
I have found an event. How do I trade?
Depending on whether you are a beginner or an advanced trader you shoold chosse the SIMPLE or ADVANCED Trading interface.
Simple Trading Interface: All you need to do is enter the amount you want to trade and your opinion. Our system then chooses the best price(s) for your order and tells you how much you will gain in case your prediction is correct. The amount shown includes your initial stake. Hit "Trade Now" to execute the order.
Advanced Trading Interface: This is for experienced traders or those who want to choose prices themselves. In the top region you find information about previous trading activity. In the middle section you find the order-book containing all current buy/sell (=bid/ask) offers. Below you can specify the number of contracts and the price at which you are willing to buy/sell.
What if nobody matches my buying/selling offer?
PredicX operates an intelligent market maker that subsidizes liquidity by matching offers that otherwise would be pending until being matched by another human trader. Liquidity, or the number of people willing to trade, is a problem on nearly all existing prediction markets. Not so on predictX. However, if you submit an offer with substantial spread to the current market price it might be the case that it takes some time until your offer is eventually matched.
What happens after my trade was cleared?
If your trading position appears in your portfolio as "held contract" order execution was succesful. You can now either sell your contracts anytime (advisable if the market value of this trading position has increased e.g. as a consequence of news that provide new information about the event) or wait until expiry. Of cousre you can also buy more contracts (advisable if the market price of your trading position has decreased but you nevertheless believe that your prediction is correct).
Selling all held contracts of a certain event: You can either sell held contracts in "My portfolio" or the Advanced Trading Interface.
Selling some of your held contracts: You can sell parts of your held contractsin the Advanced Trading Interface
What happens if I run out of funds?
If you run out of funds your IP adress will be blocked for lifetime and your avatar picture will be publicly promoted on the frontpage.
No, seriously, if you are short on trading funds you can create an event to make some risk-free money.
If your trading balance is below $50 (required for contract creation) you should thake our survey and we will reward you with fresh funds. If you tell us a good reason why you should receive some bail-out goodie funds we will likewise hook you up with fresh money.
Creating New Events
How do I create a new event?
Simply click on "Create New Event" in the top menu. You will then be asked to provide all information that is necessary to create the event.
- Title (Free Text Field): Your title must be of the following format " Will XYX blabla at/before/within YXZ(and XYZ)?". Thie convention makes it easier for traders to focus on the content rather than the wording and avoids ambiquity.
- Source: Optionally you can Specify the source that will determine the event outcome. This must be an independent and objective source. Wikipedia, Google News, the Iranian government, Blogs are certainly not good sources. Bloomberg, Reuters, WSJ, The Economist are indeed.
- Specifications: The most important field: You need to specify your event in terms of the conditions that must be satisfied to settle the event as "X has occured". This involves thinking about intermediate outcomes which need to be specified. For instance if you ask whether Google will grow by more % thatn Apple in 2011 what will the event outcome be for equal growth rates? Your specificications in this field basically determine whether your event will be launched.
- Image (Upload): You need to upload a picture for your contract. Make sure you do not violate intellectual property rights, do not upload pornographic, rassistic or otherwise disturbing material.
- Geography(Dropdown Menu): Choose one or more geographies in which the event takes place. Usually one geography is enough or you should choose "International" (e.g. for the outcome of the F1 season taking place in several countries). If you want to choose several countries press STRG while you select.
- Category (Dropdown Menu): Choose one or more categories for the event. If you want to choose several countries press STRG while you select.
- Expiry Date: The date / time at which the contract expires. For some events this mighe be obvious (e.g. elections) whereas for others you might want to choose a certain date yourself (e.g. "Will China send a human to the moon before date XY").
- Disclaimer: No games without rules.
What happens next?
$10 are deducted from your trading funds and an admin / event moderator will review your event. Depending on the information you have entered your event either gets published or rejected. Note that you cannot modify the information you have submitted after you have submitted an event.
What are the criteria whether or not my contract will be published?
- Specific: Can an outsider objectively determine whether the event has occured?
- Interesting: Do many people care about the event?
- Uncertainty / Controversy: Is the outcome unknown? Do many people have diverse opinions on the event?
- Unique: Does your event exist already?
- Ethical: Could someone feel seriously offended by your contract?
For more information see our betting rules.
What happens if my event is rejected?
Nothing. It just wont appear anywhere on the platform.
What happens if my event is accepted?
Your event will appear in the category Pending Events. In this stage you cannot change the information of your event anylonger.As soon as 4 offers have been submitted by different users. In order to set a starting propability these offers must include 2 "X will occur" and 2 "X will not uccur" offers. In case the event does not generate the required amount of trades or is dismissed by an admin your order is not cleared and your funds remain unchanged.
What happens if my event generates the required 4 offers in pending state?
Your event will appear in the category Active Events. You will now receive 5% on all traded contracts.
How do I close an event if the outcome is known before the expiry date?
Use the "Report" Button and drop us a line.
What do I have to do when an event expires?
Nothing. We will determine the event outcome, payoff users who hold contracts and move the event from Active Events to Expired Events.
How can I maximize my earnings from creating a contract?
By sharing it through facebook and/or twitter you can reach millions of people who are potentially interested in your event and start trading. Also you can directly suggest it to friends (the real ones, not the facebook ones).
Watching Events
What is this?
If you are interested in an event but do not want to trade you can simply watch an event by clicking on the "Watch" Button. The event will then appear in your watchlist and you can follow the event without making any commitment. You can trade or remove the event from your watchlist at any time.
Sharing Events
What is this?
You can share events through facebook or twitter in order to tell your friends about cool events.
If you like an event but do not want to share it via facebook simply push the Like-button under the title of an event. You need to be logged in facebook to do so.
If you want to share an event on facebook simply push the Facebook button under the trading interface.
If you want to tweet an event simply push the Tweet button under the trading interface.
Why would I want to share an event?
There are 3 potential reasons:
"I need money": If you have created an event sharing an event maximizes your income.
"Cool event!": Cool events deserve being shared.
"I support you": There is no better way of telling uns that you like what we do than following us on facebook / twitter and actively sharing events. Since we cannot afford any marketing activity this is the only way to generate more users. More users = more fun = better predictions.
Screw You! My question was not listed here!
Feel free to contact us any time. You can do so by sending us an e-mail, using the contact formular (in the footer), sending us a carrier pigeon or painting a picture.