Current asset price is based on current information available. This is future price forecast based on multiple factors like economic factors, market sentiment, fundamentals, technical analysis, market news...etc.

For example

https://kalshi.com/markets/inxw/sp500-weekly-bracket#inxw-23aug18

@Daniel but

1. The "current information available" includes the factors you point to.

2. I can get future price forecasts from the prices of futures contracts, right? (Cost of carry aside -- prediction markets would have their own issues, in particular liquidity.)

@joel_bkr There are many attempts to get a price forecast. Analyst reports for 12 months price target. Future contract that is used for hedging. Discounted cash flow analysis to find a fair value. However, most retail investors doesn't have these knowledge and go to places like wallstreetbet, which has 14M subscribers and kind of indicate the problem still exist. There were posts being hyped up by stranger who has no proven record and caused a lot of damage.

WOC Street is a play money prediction market so liquidity is not an issue. The goal is to create a trusted prediction community with more credibility and less noise for investors.

@joel_bkr Market only open 5 days a week. 8 hours a day. Companies like to release earning report or announcement post market close. The current price is not really real-time.

@Daniel I agree that retail investors are unlikely to be sophisticated enough to looks at e.g. the prices of future contracts. But why should I expect them to be sophisticated enough to seek out + understand + trust a play-money prediction market?

And, my apologies, liquidity was a bit of a misnomer. I meant to invoke related issues like "number of market participants" and volume.

I guess it feels to me like:

1. I'm not sure there's a serious problem here.

2. Even if there is, I'm not sure prediction markets solve it in practice. (I've concentrated on this above, but the other concerns feel important too.)

3. Even if they do, I'm not sure this would be highly socially valuable.

@joel_bkr That's ok. Thank you for reviewing.

1. I believe there is a serious problem. Investment fraud is one of the largest fraud type in the world. Many get rich campaigns, trading scam advertisements are still common online, exploiting unsophisticated retail investors.

2. I see there is a potential to use play money predictions market to solve it because this topic has a direct financial influence to users, unlike some other topics that has low motivation to participate.

3. If this becomes successful, I see the potential to reduce investment frauds and increase online credibility.

@Daniel No no, thank you for engaging so kindly with negative feedback. I'm very grateful that we are able to have this back-and-forth at all.

I think we've hit the bedrock of our disagreement, so will leave things here for now.

By the way, I like the design of the website! It's pretty and intuitive!

@joel_bkr Thank you! We were inspired by Manifold Market and we want to make it even more intuitive so it's not limited to high EQ individuals. We already have a couple hundred registered users.

IQ*