what is the hollywood stock exchange hsx 
the hollywood stock exchange hsx is an online prediction market in which investors bet on the performance of various components of the entertainment industry the bets are made using credits called moviestocks starbonds celebstocks tvstocks movie funds and various derivatives trades are made in hollywood dollars which players receive when they open an account make successful trades and participate in the website s quizzes each investment has a ticker like symbol for example the symbol for the movie iron man 3 is irnm3 understanding the hollywood stock exchange hsx the hollywood stock exchange game uses virtual specialist technology invented by hollywood stock exchange co founders and creators max keiser and michael r burns the exchange has been in operation since 1996 and is owned by brokerage firm cantor fitzgerald which launched a real world exchange similar to hsx called the cantor exchange in 2010 previous incarnations of the game included a music market for purchasing musical artists prizes for top gainers and briefly a buyout program in which the hollywood stock exchange would reward top players by purchasing their portfolios at a price of 1 per 1 million of exchange currency if the player listed the portfolio for sale on ebay these features have been discontinued the now discontinued practice of selling portfolios on ebay was inaugurated by curtis edmonds a former texas lawyer the hollywood stock exchange attracted some private investment during the dotcom boom and ran tv ads on cable channels in an effort to attract players after the dotcom crash the exchange was acquired by units of cantor fitzgerald cantor fitzgerald has used the exchange s moviestock prices to assist its gambling operations in the united kingdom in which bettors can place wagers on how much money u s films will gross new users who sign up receive h 2 000 000 of virtual hollywood dollars to get started playing the hollywood stock exchange game the hollywood stock exchange and prediction marketsthe hollywood stock exchange is a prediction market in the form of a game prediction markets are those created to trade on the outcome of events the market prices generally indicate what the majority of players or crowd thinks is the probability of a particular event occurring a prediction market contract will trade between 0 and 100 it is a binary option that will expire at the price of 0 or 100 prediction markets can be thought of as belonging to the more general concept of crowdsourcing which is specifically designed to aggregate information on particular topics of interest prediction markets which tend to be quite accurate exist for a wide range of subjects some like the iowa electronic markets trade in real money lately prediction markets have become quite popular for elections the website fivethirtyeight com which analyzes the likely outcome of elections among other events factors in prediction markets advantages and disadvantages of the hsxthe trading in moviestocks and starbonds serves to predict the box office in the first four weeks of a film s wide release depending on the number of investors at any given time the hsx should be relatively easy to manipulate in contrast to the regular shares however there are special warrants issued around holidays and the summer blockbuster season that have specific prices at issue these make money if the box office exceeds the face amount and expire worthless if they do not few barriers to entryprovides valuable market information to predict movie successes and failures far in advance of openingsmall markets are relatively easy to manipulate prices highly vulnerable to events like casting announcementsexample of the hsxlet s say that you think al pacino getting renewed interest because of the re release of the godfather films still has a great film left in him and you want the opportunity to make money from that you can place a trade with hollywood dollars to buy go long an al pacino starbond at a particular price or if you think for example that the world has seen enough of pacino you could sell his starbond short which allows you to profit from the downward movements in the overall price of mr pacino s starbonds with both the long and short positions when the market moves enough in your direction for you to make enough money to make you happy with your purchase you sell your long position or buy back your short position and the extra hollywood dollars you receive are your profit the bottom linethe hollywood stock exchange allows you an exciting way to participate in predicting the success or failure of upcoming films and movie star careers you receive two million hollywood dollars when you join that let you trade at will winning trades give you more hollywood dollars and start you on the road to mogul status hollywood stock exchange faqs