by Matt Barr

Liveblogging Tradesports

I started a post I was going to call a "morning roundup of Supreme Court candidates," and even managed to track down what I thought was the best and most thorough information on Alberto Gonzales. But I ditched it -- I have to work! -- and decided instead to liveblog the action on Tradesports. I have no idea how to link directly to the Supreme Court nominee board, so go to 'Legal' and 'Supreme Court' on the left menu to find it.

Tradesports only functions well as an aggregation of public wisdom if the public is wise; that is, if all the information necessary to predict an outcome is public, and if the public will be acting on it. That's why futures markets like Tradesports do well forecasting, say, election winners. Here, in a sense it's almost useless, since the decision belongs to one man, the information he's considering is decidedly not public, and in fact public speculation can put a dent in predictive value (think Edith Joy Clement last time).

However, all of the above also explains why my gathering information from blogs and other sources and synthesizing it would be useless as well. It would be worse, since I'm one person consulting a very limited number of sources. Tradesports synthsizes the analysis and decisionmaking of far more people responding to far more information. So while Tradesports might not tell us who the nominee will be, it is decidedly better than my trying to figure it out.

So, I'm going to liveblog interesting things happening on the board today. I'm working, in fact have a deadline, but that means I won't be moving very far from this spot, and eyeballing the board and writing what's happening isn't going to keep me from doing what I have to do.

As of 9am ET, three candidates were in double figures: Karen Williams, Edith Jones and Priscilla Owen. Alberto Gonzalez, Emilio Garza and Janice Rogers Brown were in the 5.0-9.9 range. The greatest volume of activity came from Gonzalez, J. Michael Luttig and Brown. I'll keep you posted.

10am ET: Judge Clement has surged into double digits, still trailing Williams, Owen and Jones. Gonzales hasn't moved. Garza has sunk some and Luttig rebounded ahead of him and Brown.

10:30 ET: (All times approximate) Judge Clement's activity was a blip, she's back down to 1.2. I wondered about that! Owen is in the lead with 13.5, followed by Williams at 13.1. Gonzales and Brown haven't moved a muscle.

11:30 ET: Jones and Owen have both sunk down to 10.0, and Gonzales to 5.8. (These numbers are their "bid" numbers, I should have mentioned previously.) Larry Thompson and Harriet Miers have each seen some activity, but nothing that vaults them into the conversation just yet. Brown and Luttig hold steady. There's been more selling of Williams, but she retains the lead.

12pm ET: Owen's sell-off contines, her bid number is down to 6.0 from 13.5 an hour and a half ago. The real drop has been Brown, who went from 5.0 pretty much all day to 0.1. I think a lot of the wild herky-jerkies lately have been due to west coast traders rousing themselves from sleep.

12:45 ET: Williams is back to the pack, or at least back to Judge Jones. Williams: bid 11.1; Jones: bid 10.1. No one else in double digits. Brown is back up to 4.0, which makes more sense. Alice Batchelder has made a minor move to 2.0 but remains among the "others receiving votes" (a college football allusion, nothing to do with Tradesports) with Thomson and Miers. Gonzales is staging a tiny comeback, up 0.8 or so to 6.3.

1:30pm ET: Jones, Owen and Williams are top of the heap in double digits, in that order. Consuelo Callahan on the Ninth Circuit has been climbing very slowly but steadily. There's been no big move, but I haven't mentioned her yet. She's at 3.7, ahead of Estrada and Maura Corrigan, in that neighborhood.

3:00pm ET: More levelling of the field. Owen sinks below 10 but buys at that price bob her back up again. Judge Batchelder sees some activity to drive her up a little.

4:30pm ET: The mover, relatively speaking, is Miers, up to bid 5.5. Clement is back up over 4. Owen and Jones holding relatively steady, Williams still in the lead.

5:00pm ET: There's been a real tightening today. These people are between 4.0 and 7.9: Brown, Clement, Garza, Gonzales, Jones, Miers, Luttig, Owen and Callahan. Maura Corrigan and Miguel Estrada are each inching up a little, though not into the field above yet.

5:45pm ET: Owen has put some daylight between herself and Jones, two points' worth. Williams leads today's quantity overall with 140, but Miers has seen the second most shares traded, 136.

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