First Fonterra contracts to launch
IPREDICT LTD
MEDIA STATEMENT
Wednesday 24 August
2011
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
www.ipredict.co.nz
First Fonterra
contracts launching at 3.30 pm today
iPredict's first
contracts forecasting Fonterra's payout will be launched on
the online predictions market at 3.30 pm today and will be
available to its 5000 registered online traders plus
everyone else who chooses to join up at www.ipredict.co.nz
The initial contracts will ask traders whether Fonterra's final 2010/11 payout, per kilogram of milk solids, to a 100 percent share-backed farmer (before retentions), will be above $7.90, above $8.00, above $8.10, above $8.20 or above $8.30. Traders can buy as many of each contract as they like.
On 24 May this year, Fonterra announced the 2010/11 payout was likely to be in the $8.00 to $8.10 range.
"This first set of contracts will give an indication of in which 10 cent increment the final payout is likely to fall," the Chief Executive of iPredict, Matt Burgess said today. "We will then add 2.5 cent increment contracts within the favoured 10 cent range to provide dairy farmers and the wider dairy community with an even more accurate forecast. Forecasting this way will give both a real-time point estimate and a margin of error."
Over the next week, iPredict plans to launch stocks to provide New Zealand the first-ever free five-year forecasts of Fonterra's likely milk solids payout.
"Fonterra is New Zealand's most important company, responsible for around a quarter of our exports and around 7% of GDP," Mr Burgess said today. "Until now, the only free source of rigorous data about the company's future payout to farmers has been the company itself, and then usually with only a two-year horizon. With iPredict's new stocks, dairy farmers, the wider industry, economists, banks, the government and everyone with an interest in New Zealand's medium-term economic prospects, will be able to obtain free snapshot information on how the company is likely to perform, in terms of payout, for the next five years."
iPredict produces consensus views on the likelihood of future events, based on the theory of the 'wisdom of crowds'. This holds that where people pool their perspectives and knowledge about a future event, their opinion is likely to be accurate. iPredict's binary contracts of political and economic events have an accuracy rate of 88%.
Predictions markets like iPredict are mainstream throughout the world, with the most prominent being www.Intrade.com in the United States. iPredict operates in New Zealand with authorisation of the New Zealand Financial Markets Authority. The company is owned by Victoria University of Wellington.
ENDS