CQ Politics is reporting that Intrade has conducted an internal investigation and determined one investor has thrown away hundreds of thousands of dollars in an effort to raise McCain's numbers.
An internal investigation by the popular online market Intrade has revealed that a single investor’s purchases prompted "unusual" price swings that significantly boosted the prediction that Sen. John McCain will become president.
Over the past several weeks, the investor has pushed hundreds of thousands of dollars into one of Intrade’s predictive markets for the presidential election, the company said, resulting in repeated monetary losses through a strategy that belies any financial motive.
"The trading that caused the unusual price movements and discrepancies was principally due to a single ‘institutional’ member on Intrade," said the company’s chief executive, John Delaney, in a statement released Thursday. "We have been in contact with the firm on a number of occasions. I have spoken to those involved personally."
I have always thought the Intrade numbers were suspicious and significantly below the Iowa Electric Markets.
If this seems like old news, it was reported by Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com several weeks ago that something fishy was going on at Intrade.
There's something funny going on over at Intrade with respect to the pricing of the Obama and McCain contracts...
Most likely, this is just some idiot degenerate gambler who is trying to have some fun. Between the Obama and McCain contracts, there appears to be about $400,000 in contracts changing hands every day, which is a lot by Main Street standards, but minuscule by either Vegas or Wall Street Standards.
Although this seems trivial, Rasmussen, Real Clear Politics and Fox Noise use these numbers in reporting the race.