Sunday, December 5, 2010

Futures Markets on Future Events

Some businesses have had employees create a futures market on a subject of importance to their company. They feel that certain points of view, though a gamble, can be prescient, if the gamblers or speculators have no inherent bias in their choices.

Future projections on business concerns always are difficult to estimate. If any can be predicted with more independent accuracy, they would be immensely practical.

But caution is needed. For such markets to have value, they must have lots of independent input. Sampling should be efficient and unbiased.

I find that is almost impractical in most business projections. However, futures markets may have their place in foretelling political outcomes and general marketing concepts.

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