Mount Albert Stocks redux

At the moment we have stocks which demonstrate how National and Labour will fare in Mount Albert if a particular candidate is chosen.

But there are no stocks to demonstrate what will happen if that candidate is NOT chosen. Is this because that value can be derived? I cannot see how to work it out?

It would be good to see some further stocks... For example, to see what happens if Labour do not choose Phil Twyford:

MTA.NOT_TWYFORD.NAT and MTA.NOT_TWYFORD.LAB

or perhaps

MTA.BATES.NAT and MTA.BATES.LAB

or even (!)

MTA.LAB_OTHER.NAT and MTA.LAB_OTHER.LAB if neither Meg Bates nor Phil Twyford is chosen by Labour.

Not to mention MTA.LEE.OTHER and MTA.TWYFORD.OTHER to take account of vote share for candidates who are from other than Labour or National. These would be good because we might see that if Labour put up a particular candidate their supporters would still prefer to vote elsewhere (e.g. Green) rather than for National.

I suspect too many of these would overload the browse stocks page or spread investor interest too thinly?

But having said that, the blog entry for these stocks tells us: "The reason conditional contracts like this are valuable is that they provide a forecast of which candidate will maximise a party’s vote share before candidate selection has occurred. That tells the party who they ought to select."

That doesn't seem to be happening with the current stocks. Perhaps the chosen stock candidates should have been from the same party, rather than one from Labour and one from National.

Hey hey Mr (or Mrs ir Miss or Mz) Master!

MTA.LEE.OTHER would probably be superfluous; its price—after the arbitrageurs have their wicked way with it—would be would be equal to

price(MTA.LEE) - (price(MTA.LEE.NAT) + price(MTA.LEE.LAB )).

Finding each party's vote-share given candidates other than Lee and Twyford isn't possible given the current stock choice; presumably the intent is to put in other stocks like MTA.X.NAT and MTA.X.LAB.

Something like MTA.OTHER.NAT and MTA.OTHER.LAB could be useful, as it would mean that the conditional stocks are still "in play" in the event of a surprise nomination.

BK Drinkwater

It looks like more are on the way:

[www.ipredict.co.nz]

(Hope that link works - Forum > Draft Stock Definitions > Mt Albert - conditional contracts)