Bob Parker to be re-elected mayor of Christchurch

Looks like he has!

Oh no he hasn't.
;-)

He has now, some bloke told me that was the last one

Thank God Bob for that!

Can we fix it?

Yes we can

Bob the Builder will fix ChCh

I'm not convinced that this will be giving Bob enough of a boost in the polls, in fact it could be some reasonable ammunition for Anderton and others when the dust settles and the finger pointing begins for these new subdivisions which have been built on pretty weak areas of land which have always been known to be prime candidates for liquefaction.

It's not like nobody expected Christchurch to get a strong earthquake, or that nobody knew about liquefaction, because at least when I went to school, this was certainly a part of the education curriculum.

If the local body elections in Christchurch are delayed (not entirely out of the question), this could be sufficient time for Anderton to swing back.

That said, I wonder if we should have an ANDERTON.MP contract in case he doesn't win the mayoralty and decides that he may as well stay on the public payroll for the next 3 years until he can try again ;-)

@sleemanji
It's going to be a tricky one because getting that type of opportunistic attack to resonate could be a difficult one particularly given that it's only a few affected subdivisions and as you say most people knew the area used to be swampy/marsh.

(I would be interested to know whether Christchurch's greenbelt, zoning laws etc, and the inflation of land prices generally has led to some of this marginal land being built on. There's no great shortage of other land that could have been built on)

To my mind the issue of whether Anderton still intends to be mayor part time is going to be critical for his credibility.

According to the reports the local elections are not going to be delayed at this stage.

Amusing

Not yet prepared to say he'll take one job at a time.

Apparently when Bob is selling at 40c that means that we are backing Bob.

So if Jim is selling at 60c what does that mean?

I'd suggest that there is a wee bit of a misunderstanding about exactly what the stock price indicates. Would also suggest that Fairfax are trying hard to spin this in favour of Bob. No surprises there.

Regardless of who is doing the spinning, I find some confusion about the way iPredicts ratings are portrayed/interpreted.

As far as I can see, the stock prices reflect the trading community's expectations of making money on the stock at any given price at any given point in time - as opposed to anyone's expectation of the eventual outcome.

My expectation of who was going to win the Oz election didn't alter through the past fortnight, based on my reading of the politics of the situation. My trading on iPredict reflected an entirely different dynamic. I bought and sold contracts on both options based on what I thought other iPredict traders were likely to do in the interim. It was clear from discussion that others were extensively gambling against various bookies, who were presumably working their odds to stimulate maximum betting traffic/revenue at least as much as they were reflecting any eventual outcome.

At which point does an iPredict position reflect a prediction of an ultimate outcome and when does it reflect simply people harvesting the shifting winds of uncertainty?

ManontheCliff

Interesting question. If I can re-phrase your question: do noise traders reduce price efficiency?

Hanson's answer, asked in the context of manipulators, is no. Hanson argues noise traders raise the returns to participants trading on fundamentals, who step in and fix wayward prices. I can't recall if he tests his hypothesis, but it is surely testable.

There's a Masters or PhD topic right there, if someone feels like testing the theory. iPredict gives its data away for such research.

So at what point does an iPredict price reflect an actual prediction of the outcome?

All the time, on average. There is a nearly 1:1 relationship between prices ex ante and outcomes.

I'm remembering why I didn't keep doing statistics...
I need to go and ponder how that relates to the times LibPM was running at 60% or higher & still gives iPredict a 100% reliabiity.
I'm sure it's in that "on average" tag. I just need to translate that into something meaningful when it comes to looking at iPredict rankings at any given time.

But 60% is still giving the Libs a 40% likelihood of losing, which in this case is what happened. That on its own doesn't say anything about the market's accuracy. The question is whether the market is efficient, which is to say prices correctly reflect the available information, and to work that out requires looking at all the times trades occurred at (say) 60 cents to see how frequently the outcome occured. The chart shows the answer is about 60% of the time, which is what we want. If the answer was instead, say, 20% of the time, then traders are walking past $20 bills.

Cheers.
"Correctly reflecting available info" is an interesting concept... and I suspect it has a subtlety of meaning within statistical analysis that doesn't necessarily have the same power in a different context. My reading of readily available information suggested the weighting on the Libs was well out of line.
But I note your target of 60% reliability, so I guess that allows for both situations.
Thanks for the tutorial.

"Correctly reflecting available info" is an interesting concept... and I suspect it has a subtlety of meaning within statistical analysis that doesn't necessarily have the same power in a different context.

Its a market efficiency concept, not a statistical one.

My reading of readily available information suggested the weighting on the Libs was well out of line.

So I presume you're up on the election result, well done. Why expect the market consensus view to reflect your own personal opinion? The one and only reason there is a difference is because others had a different view, and credibly signalled that by taking a position.

But I note your target of 60% reliability, so I guess that allows for both situations.

I didn't say it's a target. There is much you are misunderstanding.

Much misunderstanding acknowledged & accepted.
Forgive me. You said 60% "was what we want". I translated that as target.

Regards market consensus views, I am relatively little interested in whether the market consensus reflected my personal opinion. I was more interested in whether the predictive indicator suggested by iPredict's rankings was in line with the indications of information readily available from standard sources such as news feeds and the mainstream media.

It appeared to be somewhat out of sync. I attempted to test that by taking a position based on the non-iPredict information I had available. That information proved ultimately to be more consistent and accurate than the behaviour of the iPredict ranking. I'm not casting any aspertions on iPredict - just welcoming the rare opportunity to measure my usual - essentially qualitative - tools against a quantitative measure (which I happily accept as the gold standard in these things, based on those same information sources that stood up reliably in the Oz election trading).

But I don't pretend that I am other than a modest student of market efficiency concepts or the working and merits of iPredict. In fact, I assumed many of the leading players on iPredict were rather higher masters of the discipline, which is why I was puzzled by the seeming disparity in the Oz election pattern and was trying to identify how it applied to interpreting the Bob Parker dynamic.

But I will withdraw quietly back into the shadows and await the enlightenment of time.

Don't be shy! I enjoy these discussions. I agree there are apparent gaps between the pricing of a contract and the likely outcome. In my limited world-view that difference represents a few things: the time value of money of 'sure things'; the probability or risk that something unforeseen will occur, and an opportunity to make money.

My personal opinion is that markets (including but not limited to iPredict) are driven by fear and greed, hence the wild swings and over-reactions to news events. I'm one of the players admin referred to earlier who will re-price a stock if I think the pricing is out of whack with the fundamental information (just as you did with the election). It takes a strong constitution to try and stand in the way of a falling contract, but when it works it pays dividends.

Lastly, I'm not sure (and I could be wrong here) but I reckon the average (not the informed, the average) investor is not as keen on taking short positions as they are long positions, so there is a natutal tendency to push a price up on an interested stock through buying activity, rather than selling. That might be complete rubbish - it's jjust a suspicion of mine.

Cheers
Andrew

In the case of a hugely popular event like the Australian election, I think it's fairly safe to assume that the market was aware of and acting upon the same information you had at your disposal ManontheCliff. It said 60%; you disagreed, and you won.

So was the market wrong, or did you get lucky on one event? If you can keep up your $50 profit-per-week average over a decent length of time, I might be persuaded. Until then, I know which option I'd put my money on.

Hmmm, if the market was aware of the same information and made the opposite assessment, that raises so many questions about the reliability of "the market" it's hard to know where to begin.
Personally, I am more inclined to suspect different people were relying on different indicators, and - as andrew93 suggests - that other factors were at play such as risk aversion, time considerations, variations in access to/interpretation of information.
(The thoughts about short positions vs long positions also ring true.)

Interesting, defaultswap, that you choose to phrase it: I disagreed and I won - rather than I disagreed and my assessment proved more accurate.

I'm certainly not claiming any infallibility, and I'm not about to propose any definitive conclusions based on one event. I prefer rather more reliable evidence, which was the reason for my original questioning on this thread, trying to get a fix on how these things worked. But if I thought this exercise was about luck I'd forget iPredict and go put money on horses or greyhounds, or random events about which I can make no rational assessment.

But don't let me persuade anyone. Improving the reliability of other people's assessments isn't my brief. I'm just looking to improve my own.
As far as trading here on iPredict, I am totally happy for people to rely on whatever encouraged them to make the erroneous judgements they made.

The thread has drifted off topic perhaps due to some seismic event. There is a need to start a specific thread for the current comments. The direction that has been taken is interesting but has nothing to do with whether Bob Parker gets re-elected or not.

Agreed. I was originally trying to apply lessons learned on the Oz election to get a read on the Bob predictions.
I suspect there is a more direct path.

Quote
ManontheCliff
Hmmm, if the market was aware of the same information and made the opposite assessment, that raises so many questions about the reliability of "the market" it's hard to know where to begin.

Admin answered your questions about the reliability of the market - and his answer was based on a much larger sample size than one. If you wish to disagree, by all means keep speculating against the market. I eagerly await your arrival on the leaderboards!

On that note, you're about $160 away from both leaderboards by my count. Do you want to make any predictions as to how long it'll take you to get there? I could even be tempted into a friendly wager, if the odds were fair.

(Sorry Oracle.)

No, because I couldn't care less. Might be your concern. Not mine.
And there's already been a request to return this thread to Bob the rebuilder.

John Key has come out saying it needs a full time Mayor and Anderton would only be part time..

This just proves that nothing is considered a lost cause.. Just 2 weeks ago Parker had no chance.. now he is favourite and has the PM putting in a good word.

I really can't see the public of Chch dropping him now and bringing someone new in whilst all this re building is underway.

Agreed, and John Key is right of course. This looks like a 60+ hour job atm.

Plus you can love Anderton but the old guy is an old guy who has been in hospital over the last few years with heart trouble. Unless we want him dead is this a suitable retirement plan?

On the other hand old people don't seem to need much sleep. And being a supposed work-aholic maybe he's just the guy! you know, like a chain smoking old churchill was pretty good for britain in WW2, even after such brillant ideas like an assault on ANZAC cove in WW1.

I still prefer argument A, and think the job would kill Anderton, and that wouldn't be good or necessary.

On another note, if media earthquake hyperbole starts making ridiculous references to "war zones" or "WW2" you heard it here first. ...oh. yeah. nevermind.

SSB Wrote:
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> now he is favourite and has the PM putting in a
> good word.

It's been no secret that Key wants Parker to remain in the job, since well before the Earthquake. They're like bosom buddies.

> I really can't see the public of Chch dropping him

I think you underestimate how much Parker is disliked. The people I've been talking to, have not changed their opinion.

Fender Wrote:
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> looks like a 60+ hour job atm.

This week, maybe. But frankly if the Mayor can't appropriately delegate tasks amongst his councilors he's not much of a leader, being a mayor is not about doing everything yourself, your way, although Parker likes to think so.


> kill Anderton, and that wouldn't be good or

Biting my tongue.

sleemanj Wrote:
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>
> > kill Anderton, and that wouldn't be good or
>
> Biting my tongue.


Heheh yeah that line had fish hooks all over it