The Predecessor of Intrade's financials

http://www.midasoracle.org/2009/03/12/intrade-account-balance-sheet/#comments

so....Intrade is losing millions of dollars a year. Can intrade please comment on how they plan to become financially viable?

If they can not make money during the election season, when volume is the highest, how can they survive? financial

Shmoo, Chris Masse who runs the midasoracle.org site had some sort of run-in with TradeSports/Intrade several years back and he's been on a rampage against them ever since.

While there MIGHT be some truth to what he says, I certainly wouldn't take his word for anything when it comes to what he says about Intrade.

He would very much like to see Intrade go under though I'm not sure why.

That's a good point Andy. I can't help being somewhat more worried though when I consider this against the recent listing of a contract here on Intrade's future viability.

(Although I appreciate the lens being turned inward, as it were.)

As an aside, although it's publicly available information, I believe its posting on that blog is somewhat bad taste.

How is that in bad taste? Personally, I'm glad that I know that the company I have thousands of dollars deposited with is losing millions of dollars a year with no end in sight.

Andywend, any idea what the controversy that masse had with intrade was about?

I'm glad to know too, shmoo, and it's nice that Masse makes the info more readily available than it would be through perusing the Irish Companies Registration Office website. It's in bad taste only for the fact that Masse is in a state of constant contention with Intrade, and his intent is not for the general edification of patrons, but to scare them off.

Which he does succeed in to some extent.

I do not believe that this transparency is a bad thing at all as commented above. It is wholly appropriate for the leading prediction market and indeed others to publish such information. You may recall that we applied our own market to Intrade itself by listing contracts on Intrade being in business in future years.

The more information you have available about your counterparty the better you should be informed in deciding how you relate/transact with them.

Please note these reports relate to Trade Exchange Network. This is the company that previously owned and operated Intrade and TradeSports for several years. Now Intrade is a standalone company called Intrade The Prediction Market Limited. You can get information on Intrade at www.cro.ie.

Also please note that we are legally obliged to publish some information but we voluntarily do more than the minimum by having our financial statements audited by external independent registered auditors and we file their independent audit reports also at www.cro.ie. However, we never make information relating to individual trading members available to any party in Ireland or elsewhere and are legally prohibited from same except if we are required to do so pursuant to an Irish court order.

If anyone would like additional information about our business please email me at john.delaney@intrade.com. The amount of information we make available to our shareholders and the public at large here on Intrade.com, the www.cro.ie and public submissions such as those to the CFTC is limited by our information reporting resources and not our desire for maximum transparency.

I have looked over the sheet. I do not see losses of "millions" of dollars. In fact I do not see losses at all.

I see that the share equity is far less than the assets of the company. Unless you think the owners are running a pump and dump I do not see any problems here.

The losses are obvious, and clearly presented. I don't know how there can be any confusion jackwest - intrade IS losing millions a year. Look again.

Ok you're right. Not sure what happened.

Yes that is a great concern.

Shmoo, Chris Masse is extremely knowledegable when it comes to the subject of exchange trading and his midasoracle site has been around for a while.

However, I have never heard him ever say anything positive about TradeSports/Intrade and he clearly has an axe to grind with the company.

If you go to his website, you can read up about him but what you find about Intrade won't be pretty.

Since his opinions seem to be so one-sided when it comes to Intrade, I am hesitant to take his comments at face value.

If you're concerned with the financial viability of Intrade, that is certainly understandable but I would first request information from the company as opposed to relying on Mr Masse's interpretation of Intrade's balance sheet.

Andywend, any idea what the controversy that masse had with intrade was about?

Shmoo, just realized I never answered the question you actually asked.

The controversy had to do with the North Korean Missle Contract and the way it was expired.

That contract was expired based on a strict interpretation of the contract even though common sense dictated otherwise.

We touched on this when discussing that Watchmen movie contract.