Intrade.com - Futures Prediction Market?

[Tab]

Notice - If this subject isn't allowed (political betting), I'll remove it ASAP.

Intrade.com
Wikipedia Intrade

Basically, it's site a futures market for current in which you bid on what you think is the most likely outcome. From the site's FAQ.

Think in terms of points, when a contract trades from 63 to 73 - that's 10 points. Each point is worth 10¢.

If you bought one George Bush re-election contract at 63 and he does win the election, that contract will close, or settle, at 100. Your profit will be 37 points x 10¢ per each point or $3.70.

So, that seems pretty simple. There's a small fee with trading and adding funds but has anyone here actually done this? I pay quite a bit of attention to politics and I'm eying a few futures that I really think are in favor but I'm kind of skeptical as they say "if it looks too good to be true it probably is". Yea, I know there are legal issues, but technically online poker isn't legal but look how that turned out.

Has anyone does then and been successful? How do you take your money out?

 

[Infohawk]

http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/faq.html#who

Seems very kosher but appears only to be open to academics. I like these sort of sites although I'm not sure I would speculate in things that don't have any intrinsic values.

 

[ShawnD1]

I love checking that site every now and then. It's astoundingly accurate when predicting elections.

 

[Tab]

I love checking that site every now and then. It's astoundingly accurate when predicting elections.

The healthcare bill was roughly 50/50 for it's duration.

 

[Tab]

Wow, nothing?

 

[StageLeft]

Typically any time such a thing becomes accurate it becomes known at which point it loses its accuracy again; i.e. forget it.

 

[ShawnD1]

Typically any time such a thing becomes accurate it becomes known at which point it loses its accuracy again; i.e. forget it.

This will always be accurate because people are betting with real money. This isn't some thing where some random college students can manipulate the price by voting 100 times.

 

[llee]

I used to do this on Popular Science's website. They had this program called PPX which was also a virtual futures prediction market. Made it all the way to 68th place out of a couple hundred thousand.