[ExI] puzzle for intrade fans

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike
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>>…Note the twitchy bulls in the Romney graph below:

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>>…And here’s the roughly corresponding Obama graph:

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>…OK cool, I may have stumbled on some evidence to figure out what is going on here…spike

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Pardon please my high-volume posting on this topic, but be assured it will end (well, it will probably end) in a couple weeks.

 

OK so imagine the scheme was to make a bunch of trades under the radar, 20 shares at a time in the middle of the US night when not many US traders are watching.  Then the trick would be to make money in the US daytime when the USians, who are most interested in this  particular meme, are doing most of their trading.  Then one could transfer a ton of money in the night without drawing much attention.  The fact that all the trades were the same volume and the same price leads me to think it was the same person or program doing the trading, perhaps somehow selling the shares to itself.  

 

I don’t know how that works, but imagine something creating that appearance intentionally to create the apparent signature of high volume trading, perhaps to get the attention of the software traders who do not sleep, but who watch for certain signals.  Then the program could own shares of both mainstream candidates, and be ready to trigger, or take advantage if something else triggers, any stampede either direction.  That allows the software to take advantage of the observation that this complementary pair of memes tends to be active as hell during the US daytime and relatively inactive in the night, a feature less available on the stock market.

 

Actually this still doesn’t explain the apparent asymmetry where one feller’s prices drop suddenly but rise more gradually.  That one is still puzzling, and I don’t even know for sure if it is real or just a coincidence.  If I get time today, I could go through and calculate slopes on any change greater than 1 cent.

 

Ohhh there is money to be made here, big money, scores of dollars, possibly hundreds.

 

spike

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