I also discovered that Enron experimented with trading in weather and I’m not sure what they did, but its reminiscent of some ideas expressed in James Surowiecki’s “Wisdom of Crowds” where he explored the remarkable prescience of the University of Iowa’s Electronic Markets for the prediction of political events, most obviously elections but also other political futures. I read somewhere, during the last general election, that the most effective forecast for the result was the bookmaker’s odds, this must be very disappointing to the polling organisations, but it seems a financial interest sharpens the mind. Its also a fact that if you want to trade in weather, at least in the UK you have to go to Ladbrokes to bet on snow at Xmas.

ooOOOoo

Originally posted on my sun/oracle blog and republished here in Mar 2016. I changed the title, it’s meant to represent the declining difference between the derivatives market and a bookmakers; the original title was “Derivative Trading or Gambling”.

Once a ravine, now a ditch
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