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Hollywood Stock Exchange Set To Launch In April
You can buy and sell actor or movie "stock" for virtual cash on the website Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX). Starting in April the company plans on letting you turn those movie performance predictions into real dollars. HSX filed with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission for approval as an active trading site in November 2008 and has just entered the final phase of regulatory review. Richard Jaycobs, president of HSX's parent company, said, "The number of people who visit movie theaters each year and form opinions about a film's success is in the tens of millions. We believe that's the reason the public response to this product has been very positive."
To separate people from their cash?
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
It's about placing wagers on a film's performance, by the looks of it
I think this is like Intrade which is a specialized gambling market. For example with Intrade you can bet if a democrat or republican will win a state and depending on how much you paid in and at what price you can return a profit.
Now instead of getting spam about how selected penny stocks on the Vancouver and Hong Kong exchanges are set to explode and make me hundreds of thousands of dollars, I'll get spam about how "TEH A-TEAM MOVIE IS THE BOMB!!!1!! BUY NOW!!!!1".
FWIW, I've been playing the old, free version of HSX for over ten years, and HSX has utterly botched not one, but two beta releases (ask anyone who was on their forums about the V2 rollout and how that went). No way, no how am I letting them anywhere near my real money.
Oh, and "BUY PINK2!".
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Online gambling = illegal
Trading intangible nonsense under the guise of a "commodity exchange" = cool!
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So when is the sports stock exchange opening? I sure would love to bet... eh ehm I mean, "exchange and buy stock", for my favorite team.
Ideosphere/Foresight Exchange and Intrade are much more interesting. Both market "real world" events instead of hollywood flakes.
Ideosphere/Foresight is free, intrade is real dollars.
Ideosphere is semi-comatose, and the email list is currently filled with a debate over what exactly "astrology is true" means, which is at least somewhat more interesting than the past six months debating if an ipod touch/iphone is a real computer or not.
Intrade, last time I checked, is very much alive. Once I feel I know what I'm doing with monopoly money on ideosphere, I have been planning on moving to intrade and investing real money. At my present rate of learning, which only exceeds my weight loss program for failure to progress, I'll be moving to intrade right around the year 2100.
http://www.ideosphere.com/
http://www.intrade.com/
Both have been around for "forever" on the internet. The only new thing about HSX is that its securities are based on the actions of hollywood drug addicts, thus inherently unpredictable, whereas you can gain an advantage by trading intelligently on ideosphere and intrade. HSX is pure gambling, intrade is investing or at least intelligent speculation. Two inherently different activities.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
So can they do this without paying each Celebrity and Movie studio for the rights to use the names? That question will probably keep some lawyers busy for a while.
I'm confused. If this is a game, or strictly entertainment, why do they need to be registered with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission? If this is a real trading forum, what exactly do you own? May I expect a distribution from Angelina Jolie's next big blockbuster, because as a shareholder, I expect her first and only priority is to maintain and enhance shareholder value.
I didn't think it was legal to own a person. Maybe it's legal if you only own a small percentage of a person.
If they want to have a predictions market they can, others do exist, but please for the love of sanity do not call it a stock market, and don't use terms like stocks and bonds in the system except in cases where those words really apply.
I'm not sure what the correct term would be. Prediction market is the normal term, but that is not ideal.
It is not a spot commodities trading market, since in those cases you take delivery of the item, or in very few markets, the standard is for the seller to hold the item on your behalf, and while you can request delivery, it is rare. Besides it is based on a future event.
But it is also not a futures market. In a futures market, you are buying actual product too. In at least some markets what really happens is seller delivers the product to the standard destination unless a buyer has negotiated changes to that part of the contract. Then the items are usually sold immediately on the spot market, as the speculator who bought the product is not interested in having it.
But there are no physical products here. For Intrade (I suspect HSX is similar) the contract is for $10, but is contingent on an event occurring. In futures markets the product is not normally contingent.
It is definitely not like stocks, because in stocks there is a limited number of shares of any stock in existence. You cannot sell stock you don't have. You can simulate it by borrowing stock from somebody, but you need to buy replacement stock for them at some point. Here though, you can sell contracts even if you don't have any already. If you don't buy some back, then if the event occurs you must pay $10 to whoever currently owns the contract (although Intrade handles settling, so you just give Intrade the money, and they make sure it gets to the right place.)
Perhaps an insurance market is the best name, since insurance is a contract for cash contingent upon an event. Thus what you buy and sell on HSX would be better called "policies" than "shares" or "bonds".
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On the "virtual" side of the Hollywood Stock Exchange, the "dividends" are paid based upon ticket sales after 4 weeks. Whatever the movie has made is then given to the "investors" which can then be re-invested into other issues.
As for the real-money aspect, the original founders of Hollywood Stock Exchange always intended to get into the real-world side of the market by trying to set up an investment market for film makers that would be based upon the same general principles, where a film project could be submitted as an IPO of sorts and have some real-world investment into the actual film via micro-transaction. In other words, mere mortals could "invest" into the actual film making costs as a sort of corporate entity.
In theory, some films might end up turning a tremendous profit, and some of the early fans of the concept could pool their money together to get the financing of some interesting project off the ground through some financing scheme like this. The stocks, when they closed under this model, would pay out based strictly on what revenue comes in.... keeping in mind Hollywood financing tricks and other garbage that would have to be reviewed incredibly closely on something like this too.
Something of this nature would be certainly interesting. Unfortunately, based on this very limited information in this article it doesn't sound like that is going to be the route this particular group will be going. It sounds more like something more akin to what Las Vegas casinos do with sports events and people betting on the success or failure of a given team winning a game. If that is the case, this would most certainly have to be classified as a gambling activity and not a legitimate security exchange.
1) Sell the stock short
2) Release via bittorrent
3) Profit!
-1 Uncomfortable Truth