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LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Hollywood Stock Exchange is tentatively set to launch as a real-money commodity exchange April 20, offering film buffs and industry executives the opportunity to make wagers on movies' box office prospects.
A spokesman said the exchange is "on track" to begin listing films' box office projections for live trading from that date.
HSX, owned by U.K.-based investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald, filed with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission for approval as an active trading site in November 2008, and recently entered the final phase of regulatory review.
Since 1998, HSX has allowed just-for-fun traders to buy and sell valueless shares in Hollywood films based on forecasts of what the pictures will ring up. Once launched, a new HSX site will list current and imminent movie releases with their projected four-week domestic grosses and allow exchange users to take long or short positions on the films.
A formal announcement about rules and guidelines for HSX users is expected closer to the launch. The exchange hopes to lure hobbyist investors as well as industry professionals, though the latter will be prohibited from improper insider activity.
For instance, distribution execs with access to early box office data will be barred from making trades on the exchange after a film has opened. But film financiers will be allowed to invest in HSX an amount equal to a minority percentage of their total investment in a movie.
Investors wishing to participate in the exchange will buy "contracts" priced at one one-millionth of a film's projected boxoffice, with films to be listed on the exchange from the time productions are announced in the industry trade papers. Trading will begin six months before a movie's anticipated wide release.
"The number of people who visit movie theaters each year and form opinions about a film's success is in the tens of millions," Cantor Exchange president Richard Jaycobs said. "We believe that's the reason the public response to this product has been very positive."
Cantor Entertainment chief Andrew Wing said the exchange targets movie distributors, exhibitors, producers and other investors seeking "an unprecedented public market to create liquidity and hedge their daily business activities."
Until now, HSX revenue has come from industry ad sales and the sale of customer-use data to Hollywood marketing outfits.
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source : us.rd.yahoo.com
Submited at Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 4:00 pm on Movie News by natalia
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