The world is a busy place. ExtZy’s “Countries” Market is a marketplace where players buy and sell shares which pay dividends based on a country’s web mentions, as calculated by search engines each week. Each share has a price and dividend earnings. Thus the price/earnings ratio (P/E) of countries in such a market is an indicator of whether or not players predict a higher than normal rate of mentions (high P/E) looking forward, or a lower than normal rate of mentions (low P/E) looking forward. ExtZy players get their news from similar sources and are unlikely to have private knowledge. Even if they had private knowledge of major events, it would be immodest to suggest that they run to ExtZy to trade. Players successfully predicted sustained upturns in UK (Jubilee and Olympics) news and US (presidential elections). Players were unsuccessful in guessing future Chinese dividends (leadership change). Other markets where players had moderate predictive success in determining new levels were Spain (banking crisis), Greece (economic crisis fatigue) and Egypt (regime change). The Countries Market does seem to be able to determine when news will rise to a new level and ‘hold’, or drop to a new level. Click here to read more.

We look forward to looking back in 2014.