Ben: The incredibly tiny scope, where attempts to do any such thing would be extremely obvious to whoever is watching, something that all the other traders are financially incentivized to do.

Which is it: insider…

The government agreed internationally and passed domestic legislation to place requirements on financial institutions to do due diligence on their customers. There wasn't any…

Maybe not beforehand, but after another one existed, they'd have less of a leg to stand on.

I’m actually surprised that the…

Misusing confidential information is one problem. Having a conflict of interest such that the employee can change a price to make money for themselves (as…

There are a whole…

Didn't see that coming. -sorry, I'll get me hat

Particularly when no small part of the purpose is for the information that it provides, because the bets aren't about which dice or card will come up, or which horse gets thrashed across the line first, but majorly important issues of…

To get round this, they got the FMA to license them as a…

I just saw this, and it reminded me of the time I was out there on a 50,000t ship in 80knot winds, with waves breaking on the bridge.

Yeah you’re quite right, I’m not qualified to provide the figure.

So just to be clear here; you are advocating Jan Wright’s opinion that we are out of engineering options, that the engineering feats…

Do you have any concept of how much building a sea wall around NZ would cost? We don't live next to the North Sea with it's unending gentle drizzle on shallow and sheltered coastal waters, but the vast Pacific Ocean with…

(And if you read further in the issue you can also find an article about special education by Giovanni and me)

engineering options there may work a bit for a while but they’re not really a long or even a…

God, are the permanently outraged on the behalf of others brigade ever going to stop banging that dubious drum?

But why would they? Since Labour have now picked up that mantle in an attempt to corner that market, ANZ’s ideological centre has arguably been shunted further right – conservative Labour voters now face less of a philosophical hurdle if deciding to vote NZF.…

Not really. It's pretty easy to dominate an obscure stock for a week by sinking a few hundred dollars into it.…

Many NZ First voters despise National, but they’re not too keen on Labour either.

I'm not so sure about the second part of that. I'd say they've got a much bigger Labour defector…

In my view there isn't really…

Yeah sorry.

Very true. However, he hasn't exactly lived a stress-free life and I'm gonna guess his doctor would like him to live a healthier lifestyle, giving up smoking, drinking only in moderation and eating better are usually recommended.

Of…

I umm... lost money betting on myself on iPredict last year. But I couldn't very well back the candidate from the other side. I was just making sure that any newspaper snippets…

(I'd be interested so see there are any NZ stats on life expectancy crossed by wealth and ethnicity).

I was wondering if that stat was somewhere and suspected that it would be higher than 73.

It is true that once you make it past 75 or so you do have a pretty good chance of making…

(For comparison: in 2002, life expectancy for Maori males was 69, but additional life expectancy for 65-yo Maori…

But then again no prediction method of highly uncertain events is perfect. Even just within mainstream statistics there are a vast number of methods for making predictions, which can give very different results for identical data.

Prediction markets have the beauty that they…

Winston Peters is 70.

Average life expectancy for Maori males is 73.

Does anyone believe NZFirst will exist after Peters?

Glad we're agreed…

At 5pm the day before the 2014 election they were predicting National to get 44% (got 47%) and Labour/Greens/Mana to get 43%.

The 1% gap turned out to be a…

They are specifically excluded from sports (all "entertainment" events, IIRC). E.g. they can't run stocks on Golden Globe winners.

..is the University essentially using its “standing” to gain a privileged exemption from gambling…

That was the official hotlinking and embedding URL – didn't they use to come through with the credit shown? Anyway, I've added that.

I think he's the strongest competitor for their voting pool. I don't know if that means they should fight him harder or sweet talk him, but I think they should face up to the fact that they appeal to people…

And could anyone set up a "futures market" on this basis (perhaps with "futures trading…

There big issue is still the haziness of the crystal ball, even if we assume the markets are well calibrated. At…

Actually, lots of people have studied connections between prediction markets and actual outcome, including the specific case of iPredict. The foundational reference is The Wisdom of Crowds (2004), and Justin Wolfers and Douglas Hubbard among others have done a lot…

I seem to recall iPredict having unexplained money movements used to generate cheap publicity articles closer to elections. I think we are a little far out from the election for "proxy for cheap advertising".

I agree iPredict has been running…

They don't.

http://fma.govt.nz/compliance/exemptions/current-exemption-notices/securities-markets-act-exemptions/futures-contracts-ipredict-limited-3/

Apart from in circumstances where participants are able to steal their employers information and use it corruptly for gain, why should it be accurate?

And why does Vic Uni run an unlicensed bookmakers? Connections, I suppose.

Guessing what he'll do, trying to assign probabilities, maintain relations, and all that jazz is useless. I don't think even he knows what he will do until after the election. Until the election he will make that clear. This attracts…