Archive for February 14th, 2009

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Chris Masse: The truth about prediction markets

February 14, 2009

Michael Giberson

At Midas Oracle, Chris Masse spills the truth about prediction markets:

Come to the wonderful world of collective intelligence, wisdom of crowds, and prediction markets!… The sun shines bright, the market-generated predictions are vastly superior to polls as election predictors, and the track record of the public prediction markets stretches as far as the eye can see. There are opportunities aplenty in the field of prediction markets, and the trading technology is cheap. Every working enterprise can have its own internal prediction exchange, and inside every exchange, enterprise prediction markets that correctly predict the future of business, which their happy, all-American CEO listens to. Life is good in the magic world of prediction markets… it’s paradise on Earth.

Ha! ha! ha! ha!… That’s what they tell you, anyway… —because they are selling an image. They are selling it thru their vendor websites, vendor conferences, vendor-fed professor interviews on television, and vendor-inspired articles in newspapers and magazines.

The reality check is…

Read the rest at Midas Oracle.

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Luminant to idle 15 natural gas fired generators in Texas

February 14, 2009

Michael Giberson

Just reinforcing the view that power prices in Texas will be much lower in the upcoming year, and perhaps beyond, last week Luminant filed notice with ERCOT of the company’s intention to mothball 4 and retire 11 natural gas generators in the Texas power system.

Luminant spokesman Allan Koenig said many of the units are steam-driven and date to the 1950s and 1960s, although some are newer combustion turbines dating to the 1980s. As opposed to so-called “base-load” units that run constantly, the affected units are “peakers,” which run to meet peak demand, usually in the summer.

The article notes that Luminant and other companies also have new generating capacity coming online. Luminant’s new construction consists of three coal-fired base-load units, while they are retiring older natural gas-fired peakers. The combination of moves by Luminant should say something about the economics of power generation and expected price patterns for the next few years in ERCOT.

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