Predictions

I know that I can't predict the price of any asset, because of the Efficient-Market Hypothesis (EMH). Some people use technical analysis or quantitative analysis to try and predict prices of assets. I'm okay with people using whatever information and strategies they can come up with being more market aware.

Play

What I do is wait for one half hour to one hour after game being published. Then look at counts for up and down. Whichever selection has the least amount of votes is the one I will upvote. If you ask how can you ever hope to pick the winner? My answer is I don't expect to pick the winner.

Remember, I use EMH. This comes down to actually picking any winner a 50/50 proposition.

Analysis

The value of each upvote is equal 1 and there is no fee. The payoff would be equal to the total upvotes. Let's say 150 people played the game and 100 chose up and 50 chose down (including me). This means if I repeatedly played this game my average return would be 1.5. The ones who chose up would have a return of 0.75 and if you randomly selected up or down you would have a rate of return of 1.125.

Fun Coming

Of course mileage will vary because every time you play these games the chosen up or down ratios will be different. The real fun will begin if lots of people play and the up/down are nearly equal. That will be the time I start doing correlation studies and then start creating spread bets on different underlyings.