Not predicting the markets - Predicting Markets. Using market forces - the wisdom of crowds - to make predictions. In the September 2007 issue of IEEE Spectrum, there is an excellent article titled Bet on it! Can a stock market of ideas help companies predict the future? What is interesting is that the article does not once mention the Delphi methodology. Delphi uses input from multiple independent experts to formulate a forecast. The method places an emphasis on a systematic interactive and repetitive revision of forecasts - not unlike the prediction markets, which are constantly being updated based on the interaction of participants in the market. The main difference between prediction markets and Delphi is that Delphi depends on a limited number of experts, whereas a prediction market can have a large number of traders influencing the forecasts.

But, Delphi required experts and facilitation. Depending on what you wish to predict, a market can be stood up on a relatively small budget. Zocalo is an open source project that enables the building of prediction markets. The lead developer, Chris Hibbert, has a blog called Prediction Markets, Economics, Science Fiction, and more from a libertarian perspective, which tracks interesting trends in the prediction markets as well as information about Zocalo. With a little effort (I have not tried it yet - it could be a lot of effort), you could have your own prediction market up and running.

Or you can just participate in other markets that are already running. From the Spectrum article, I pulled some links to the more interesting (to me at least) markets:

inklingmarkets.com
www.urladex.com
www.ftpredict.com
mediapredict.com
newsfutures.com
ppx.popsci.com
www.trendio.com
www.thewsx.com