Prediction Markets as Content Source for Journalists

Yesterday, we were incredibly excited to learn that CFO Magazine published an article that used data from the CFO Prediction Market as the primary data source. Last we checked, “CFOs Not on the Recovery Bandwagon Yet” was the second-most viewed article on CFO Magazine’s website.

As far as we know, this is the first magazine article that has used a prediction market as its primary data source. We think this represents a great response to current trends in the publishing industry. Social media and user-generated content are profoundly changing how news is generated and consumed — the recent election in Iran is a great example of this. Now, we are providing user-generated content which is aggregated and synthesized by a reputable news source. This seems to combine the best both worlds – readers get “the best of the best” user-generated content, without having to sift through the content themselves.

The CFO Prediction Market is a unique space for readers to share user-generated content and to learn from each other about a range of questions, many of which are not included in financial markets. The content of the article — including many of the quotes — came from market participants (many of whom are regular readers of CFO Magazine). Clearly, prediction markets can play a valuable role in helping media companies involve readers in content generation.

The article surfaces some interesting differences in opinion between CFO Prediction Market users, who are primarily from the corporate world, and Federal Reserve Bank forecasters, who are mostly from the financial sector. The forecasts discussed in the article haven’t closed yet — so the jury’s still out on how which forecasts were more accurate. We do know, however, that the forecasts from the CFO Prediction Market represent the aggregation of points of view of a large and informed audience. This raises interesting questions about where the economy is heading — questions that CFO Magazine is uniquely positioned to foster constructive dialogues about.