Intrade Daily Dollar Volume

While some in the blogosphere continue to try to push the idea that google trends could be a good election indicator, Intrade has become a popular supplement to traditional polling to help handicap each candidate's odds of winning.  Recently, Obama's odds have surged above 70%.

Many in financial markets are comfortable with Intrade as a prediction market presumably because of the pervasive belief that markets are efficient at predicting future events.  Most technicians will argue that you can't trust prices without volume though, and in the volume department Intrade is still a developing marketplace.

Below is an evolution of the daily dollar volume that trades in Intrade's most popular contract, the Obama presidency contract.  Volume has risen sharply as the election has gotten closer, but still only averages $1.2m per day in September, which is roughly equivalent to an illiquid microcap stock.