Thanks to all who sent entries into the SPX Contest (http://slopeofhope.com/2010/03/spx-guessing-contest-and-slopefest.html). Also, thanks to Market Sniper and Biff for providing the prizes. So, I tried to think of something creative I could do with all of the entry data. But all I could come up with is a lame histogram. You can say more about data that has already occurred but you can only gather so much from a data series of educated guesses.
The day the contest entries closed, March 31, SPX closed at 1169. The mass of the entries is in the 1100-1150 range. Our guesses were, in general, below the close on March 31. Perhaps this is collectively our own bias showing up?
The mean of the entries is 1124 with a standard deviation of 72. The shape is, in general, a bell-curve shape. Assuming a normal, or Gaussian, distribution, this means that about 68% of entries were within 72 points of the mean. The entries aren't necessarily a normal distribution … a Weibull distribution may fit the data better. We can try to fit all kinds of distributions, but we can't gather much more information from doing that. What would be interesting to see is a volume profile of SPX from April 1 – May 7 (day after all of the entries closed until the contest date). Would be interesting to see how well the actual volume profile matches up to the histogram of the entries. Right now, all we'd have is some volume traded in the 1170-1200 (oh, so close on Monday!) range.
