Visit our Sports page now to make more than 50 March Madness predictions, including picks for each game as well as for the Final Four & Championship. While there are many other March Madness contests out there, PunditTracker allows you to a build a lifetime track record.
We will update the picks throughout the tournament.
We are excited to announce some new features on PunditTracker.com:
User Rankings: We now post the three Top-Ranked Users on the Home Page as well as your individual ranking on the My Profile page.
Social Sharing: You can now share your predictions both on Twitter and Facebook. Just click the “Share” button on the rightmost column of the prediction table (My Profile page).
Public/Private Profiles: If you do not want your prediction history accessible by other users, you can now make your profile private by clicking on the Edit Info button on the My Profile page and then checking the Private box.
If you have not been making predictions on the site yet, now is a great time to start doing so! With new pundits being added each week, there are plenty of calls on the site that are currently open for voting. Recall that the three top-ranked users (with at least 25 graded predictions) will earn the right to become Featured Pundits on our website. The current “PT Challenge” ends on June 30, but we plan to make this a recurring contest each year (on a cumulative prediction basis). Therefore, we caution users against making a bunch of low-conviction votes simply to hit the 25 prediction threshold by June.
We have received some terrific new feature suggestions from users and plan to implement many of them in the months ahead. Keep the feedback coming, including on Twitter (@pundittracker) and Facebook.
When we started tracking James Altucher in 2011, it didn’t take long to recognize that Altucher swings for the fences with his predictions. In fact, all seven of his predictions that we have cataloged have had Medium-High or High boldness ratings. Altucher’s approach is likely to result in a low Hit Rate, but his Yield will tell the story over the long run.
Three of his predictions have come due so far in 2013:
Dow Jones Index will hit 20,000 within one year (made on 2/27/12): Predictions don’t get much bolder than this — consider that the Dow was at 13K at the time — and this one proved to be wildly off the mark, with the Dow finishing February at just above 14,000.
Outcome: FALSE
Apple will be $1 trillion dollar company in one year (made on 2/6/12): Altucher was calling for more than a double in Apple’s valuation, and when the stock soared to $700 per share last fall, the prospect suddenly seemed plausible. However, the stock has since given back its gains and closed Feburary 6 at about $457 share, slightly down from when Altucher made his prediction.
Outcome: FALSE
S&P 500 to hit 1500 by early 2013 (made on 9/23/11): The S&P was at 1130 when Altucher made this prediction for a 30%+ return over the next sixteen months. This bold call was proven correct when the S&P eclipsed 1500 in late January.
Outcome: TRUE
Overall, Altucher has been 1-for-6 with the predictions we have tracked, with a $0.92 yield. Click here to see the details for all his calls, including yet another super-bold one: that Facebook will have a $300 billion market capitalization by 2017.
We tracked 22 pundits who made predictions for all 24 categories of the 85th Annual Academy Awards. Here are the results:
[The second column is the # of predictions that turned out correct. The third column is the Yield, which measures the average payout, based on Vegas odds, had you bet $1 on each of the predictions. This gives pundits more credit for out-of-consensus calls, and a Yield above $1.00 means the pundit did better than the consensus view]
Pundit Hit Rate Yield
Anthony Breznican, Entertainment Weekly 21/24 $1.61
Scott Feinberg, Hollywood Reporter 21/24 $1.48
Anne Thompson, Indiewire 20/24 $1.45
Melena Ryzik, New York Times 20/24 $1.31
Gary Susman, MovieFone 17/24 $1.22
Clayton Davis, The Awards Circuit 17/24 $1.12
Kris Tapley, HitFix 18/24 $1.08
Richard Lawson, The Atlantic Wire 18/24 $1.07
Tom Shone, The Guardian 18/24 $1.05
Vegas Favorites 19/24 $1.03
Joel D Amos, Movie Fanatic 17/24 $1.02
Rotten Tomatoes 18/24 $1.01
Glenn Whipp, Los Angeles Times 17/24 $0.96
Peter Knegt, Indiewire 17/24 $0.94
Guy Lodge, HitFix 16/24 $0.93
Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times 16/24 $0.89
Joal Ryan, E! Online 15/24 $0.87
Pete Hammond, Deadline.com 15/24 $0.86
Kevin Polowy, NextMovie 16/24 $0.84
Steve Pond, TheWrap 15/24 $0.83
Kyle Buchanan, Vulture 16/24 $0.82
Wesley Morris, Grantland 11/24 $0.69
The Best Pundit award goes to Anthony Breznican of Entertainment Weekly, who got 21/24 picks correct, including non-consensus ones such as “Lincoln” for Production Design and “Skyfall” for Sound Editing (where it earned a tie). Scott Feinberg of the Hollywood Reporter and Anne Thompson of Indiewire also scored high marks, while Wesley Morris of Grantland had a rough showing. Simply going with the favorites — as deemed by the oddsmakers — would have yielded a slightly positive return.
Finally, here are the cumulative rankings of the pundits we track that made predictions for all categories both last year and this year, with Melena Ryzik of the Carpetbagger blog (New York Times) earning the top spot.
Pundit Last Year This Year Cumulative
Melena Ryzik, New York Times $1.36 $1.31 $1.34
Anne Thompson, Indiewire $1.07 $1.45 $1.26
Clayton Davis, The Awards Circuit $1.35 $1.12 $1.24
Kris Tapley, HitFix $1.39 $1.08 $1.24
Scott Feinberg, Hollywood Reporter $0.96 $1.48 $1.22
Peter Knegt, Indiewire $1.37 $0.94 $1.16
Vegas Favorites $1.10 $1.03 $1.07
Glenn Whipp, Los Angeles Times $1.16 $0.96 $1.06
Pete Hammond, Deadline.com $1.22 $0.86 $1.04
Steve Pond, TheWrap $1.14 $0.83 $0.99
Guy Lodge, HitFix $1.01 $0.93 $0.97
Rotten Tomatoes $0.83 $1.01 $0.92
Kyle Buchanan, Vulture $1.01 $0.82 $0.92
Kevin Polowy, NextMovie $0.95 $0.84 $0.90
Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times $0.73 $0.89 $0.81
Update: We originally had Kris Tapley scored at 17/24, which was incorrect. This has been fixed.
With predictions for the the 85th Annual Academy Awards flowing in, let’s revisit which film pundits fared best and worst with their Oscar predictions last year. Here are our rankings for the 21 pundits we tracked, along with several of their predictions for this year (based on the latest available information, which we will update throughout the week).
Last Year’s Oscars: Rankings
Yield = how much money you would have made, on average, had you placed $1 bets on each of the pundit’s predictions (based on Vegas odds)
HR = Hit Rate = # correct predictions / # total predictions
Yield HR Picture Actor Actress S Actor S Actress Director
Kris Tapley $1.39 79% Argo DDL Riva DeNiro Hathaway Lee
Peter Knegt $1.37 79% Argo DDL Riva DeNiro Hathaway Spielberg
Clayton Davis $1.35 83% Argo DDL Riva Waltz Hathaway Russell
Melena Ryzik $1.36 83% Argo DDL Lawrence DeNiro Hathaway Lee
Pete Hammond $1.22 75% Argo DDL Riva DeNiro Hathaway Lee
Glenn Whipp $1.16 79%
Steve Pond $1.14 75% Argo DDL Riva DeNiro Hathaway Lee
Sasha Stone $1.11 75%
Vegas Favorites $1.10 77% Argo DDL Lawrence Jones Hathaway Spielberg
Dave Karger $1.09 75% Argo DDL Lawrence DeNiro Hathaway Lee
Anne Thompson $1.07 71% Argo DDL Lawrence Jones Hathaway Lee
Guy Lodge $1.01 67% Argo DDL Riva Waltz Hathaway Lee
Kyle Buchanan $1.01 67% Argo DDL Lawrence Jones Hathaway Spielberg
Lou Lumenick $0.98 65%
Jim Slotek $0.98 58%
Scott Feinberg $0.96 67% Argo DDL Lawrence Waltz Hathaway Lee
Kevin Polowy $0.95 67% Argo DDL Lawrence Jones Hathaway Spielberg
Rotten Tomatoes $0.83 58% Argo DDL Lawrence Jones Hathaway Spielberg
Mark Harris $0.76 58%
Richard Roeper $0.73 58% Argo DDL Lawrence DeNiro Hathaway Spielberg
Erik Childress $0.63 54%
S.T. VanAirsdale $0.59 43%
Last year was a good one for the favorites (as deemed by oddsmakers), which outperformed most of the pundits we tracked on both a Yield and Hit Rate basis. For the pundits that scored well on our Yield metric, underdog picks such as “Undefeated” in Documentary and “Hugo” in both Cinematography and Visual Effects accounted for most of the outperformance.
We will update the picks throughout the week and then provide updated rankings following Sunday’s results. If there are any other Oscar pundits that you wish to see tracked, just let us know.
As we head into All-Star Weekend, let’s take a look at how the NBA pundit prognostications are shaping up so far this year. We are tracking the predictions of 35 ESPN pundits across 11 categories: 6 division winners, 2 conference winners, overall champion, MVP, and Rookie of the Year. Given that it’s too early to judge the likelihood of conference and overall championship winners, we will only analyze how the division and player award picks are faring (8 categories), assuming the season ended today. This might prove presumptuous, but we are assuming that LeBron wins MVP and Damian Lillard wins ROY (for you Kevin Durant fans, we are happy to provide the data based on KD winning the MVP).
The table is ranked by Yield, although you can sort by # correct as well. As a reminder, the Yield metric calibrates predictions for boldness by measuring the average payout (using Vegas odds) had you placed $1 bets on each of the pundit’s selections. The last row (“total”) shows the % of pundits that got each category right — for instance, none of the 35 pundits picked the Knicks to win the Atlantic, while all of them picked the Heat to win the Southeast.
Pundit Atl Ctl SE NW SW Pac RoY MVP # Yield
Total 0% 86% 100% 86% 83% 6% 31% 54% 4 $0.96
Kevin Arnovitz BOS IND MIA OKC SA LAL Lillard James 6 $1.47
Nick Friedell BOS IND MIA OKC SA LAL Lillard James 6 $1.47
Dave McMenamin BKN IND MIA OKC MEM LAL Lillard James 5 $1.27
Israel Gutierrez BOS IND MIA OKC SA LAC Davis Paul 5 $1.21
Brian Windhorst BOS IND MIA OKC SA LAL Lillard Durant 5 $1.12
Beckley Mason BOS IND MIA OKC SA LAL Lillard Durant 5 $1.12
Mike Mazzeo BOS IND MIA OKC SA LAL Lillard Durant 5 $1.12
David Thorpe PHI CHI MIA DEN SA LAL Lillard James 4 $1.11
Marc Stein BOS IND MIA OKC SA LAL Davis James 5 $1.04
Chris Palmer BOS IND MIA OKC SA LAL Davis James 5 $1.04
Larry Coon BOS IND MIA OKC SA LAL Davis James 5 $1.04
Royce Webb BOS IND MIA OKC SA LAL Davis James 5 $1.04
Tom Haberstroh BOS IND MIA OKC SA LAL Davis James 5 $1.04
Maurice Brooks BOS IND MIA OKC SA LAL Davis James 5 $1.04
Arash Markazi BOS IND MIA OKC SA LAL Davis James 5 $1.04
Chris Forsberg BOS IND MIA OKC SA LAL Davis James 5 $1.04
Ian Begley BOS IND MIA OKC SA LAL Davis James 5 $1.04
Vegas Favorites BOS IND MIA OKC SA LAL Davis James 5 $1.04
Scoop Jackson BOS IND MIA OKC MEM LAC Drummond Paul 4 $1.02
Justin Verrier BOS IND MIA DEN SA LAL Lillard Durant 4 $0.98
R. Shelburne BOS IND MIA OKC MEM LAL Lillard Paul 4 $0.93
Tim Legler BOS CHI MIA OKC SA LAL Lillard Durant 4 $0.90
Keith Lipscomb BOS CHI MIA OKC SA LAL Lillard Durant 4 $0.90
John Hollinger BOS IND MIA DEN SA LAL Davis James 4 $0.89
Chad Ford BOS IND MIA DEN SA LAL Davis James 4 $0.89
Adena Andrews BOS IND MIA OKC MEM LAL Davis James 4 $0.84
Jackie MacMullan BOS CHI MIA OKC SA LAL Davis James 4 $0.82
Tim MacMahon BOS CHI MIA OKC SA LAL Davis James 4 $0.82
Chris Ramsay BOS IND MIA DEN MEM LAL Davis James 3 $0.70
J.A. Adande BOS IND MIA OKC SA LAL Davis Durant 4 $0.69
Chris Broussard BOS IND MIA OKC SA LAL Davis Durant 4 $0.69
Michael Wallace BOS IND MIA OKC SA LAL Kidd-Gilchrist Paul 4 $0.69
Henry Abbott PHI IND MIA OKC SA LAL Drummond Durant 4 $0.69
Jack Ramsay PHI IND MIA OKC SA LAL Sullinger Wade 4 $0.69
Bruce Bowen BKN IND MIA OKC SA LAL Davis Durant 4 $0.69
Adry Torres BKN IND MIA OKC MEM LAL Davis Durant 3 $0.50
Will the Lakers make the playoffs? Will Josh Smith get traded before the deadline? Make your predictions now on our Sports page.
Brill’s Content, an old media-watchdog magazine, used to track the predictions of political pundits such as George Will and Eleanor Clift. The magazine incorporated an interesting twist: it compared the accuracy of these professional pundits with that of Chippy, a chimpanzee who chose random ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers. Chippy did quite well, hitting on more than half of his “predictions” and beating out several of the experts.
Inspired by Chippy, today we are introducing three new pundits on PunditTracker: Groundhog Gary, Coin-Flip Chloe, and RNG Roger. These fictitious pundits will make one random prediction each week: Gary in Finance, Chloe in Politics, and Roger in Sports. Each Monday, we will take one popular topic in each category and then literally flip a coin to pick which side the pundit takes.
Not only will this feature allow us to compare the ‘experts’ with a random number generator, but it will also supply a steady stream of predictions for you to vote on.
Gary, Chloe, and Roger have alluredy made their predictions this week – click on their profile pages to make yours:
- Groundhog Gary (Finance)
- Coin-Flip Chloe (Politics)
- RNG Roger (Sports)
We consider the bible of pundit prediction analysis to be Philip Tetlock’s Expert Political Judgment. The book details an epic study conducted by Tetlock, in which he tracked more than 80,000 predictions from nearly 300 political pundits over the course of 20 years.
There are plenty of fascinating insights in the book, but we particularly enjoy the roster of excuses that pundits trot out when confronted with the fact that their prediction was dead wrong (Tetlock refers to these as “belief system defenses”). Here are some of our favorites:
Pundit defenses (a.k.a. lessons in how to not admit that you were wrong)
Too early: “I was simply too early; just wait and see, that stock market crash is still coming.” (see: Broken Clock Pundits)
Black swan: “Sure, our credit rating models failed, but who could have predicted that housing prices would fall across the country at the same time?”
Close enough: “Hey, I said the stock market would go up more than 10% and it went up 8%. I was basically right.”
Self-negated: “It was our own beliefs and actions that spared the world from catastrophe.” (see When Prophecy Fails)
Hedged: “I only said that it could happen.” (See: The 40% Rule) — note: when pundits are correct, they strangely fail to mention the hedge.
What other excuses have you heard? And can you think of any specific examples of the dodges above?
Friendly reminder: Only a few days left to make your predictions on the 2013 calls from Byron Wien, Karl Rove, Doug Kass, and others.
