The Wisdom of the Crowds Calls the S&P 500 Right 60% of the Time!

LONDON, February 27 /PRNewswire/ -- The website www.ConsensusView.com
was launched to find out whether the "Wisdom of Crowds" can give
traders an edge in the financial markets. The Wisdom of Crowds is an
idea popularised by James Surowiecki in his book by the same title
which was published last year.

In one example, Surowiecki describes how the scientist Francis Galton
attended an agricultural fair in 1906 with a contest to guess the
weight of an ox. Galton asked the organiser to keep the guesses. When
he averaged them they came to 1,197 lbs. The weight of the ox was
1,198 lbs! Another comes from the TV show "Who wants to be a
Millionaire". Contestants who asked the audience when stuck got the
correct answer 91% of the time, while those who phoned their "expert"
friend only got a correct answer 65% of the time.

ConsensusView.com allows participants in the Stock, FX and Futures
markets to forecast the direction of the markets and in return see the
consensus view of where a market is heading. Participation is free and
there is US$12,000 of prize money for the best forecasters.
Participants can choose to compete as individuals or in teams, with a
minimum requirement of 100 forecasts per month spread over a number of
markets to qualify.

The idea is catching on fast: the site already has users from many
major hedge funds as well as investment banks and mutual funds.
Although measuring market sentiment is not new, www.ConsensusView.com
is the first to open the voting to all members of the trading
community and capture the consensus as well as the hit-rate on a daily
basis. At present this stands at over 60% in some markets.

Co-founder Stephan Bisse, who worked for Goldman Sachs in London for 7
years, said: "This is the first time that anyone has tried to find out
whether the wisdom of the crowds has predictive power in the financial
markets, and so far the answer is a resounding yes!"

The polling covers the constituents of the S&P 500, the FTSE 100 and
the Toronto Stock Exchange Index. It also covers the 40 most active
Futures Markets and the 20 most active FX currency pairs.

Contact details for ConsensusView.com:

Stephan Bisse

Oxford Centre for Innovation

Mill Street

Oxford OX2 0JX

UK

Telephone: +44-1865-811-113

E-mail: Stephan.Bisse@consensusview.com

Website: www.ConsensusView.com SOURCE ConsensusView.com