ProTrade, and industry specific stock markets

About a month ago a company called ProTrade officially launched. That is, they officially told the media who they are and what they are doing. Then in turn the media relayed the information told to them by ProTrade's management and public relations company, albeit it in different words, to the public, persons like you and me. The company was able to get a good amount of print, including an Associated Press written article.

Contragulations to ProTrade as a company, and its employees, on a successful launch.

Now you ask, what is ProTrade and why am I writing about them in the Gi Blog. Well, ProTrade is a company trying to implement a concept similar to the GolfInvestors concept focusing on football and baseball.

In one sense ProTrade is initially a competitor to Gi as they could enter the golf realm of things with their operations. In another sense, however, they compliment and fortify the Gi concept via the football and baseball segments of the sports and recreation industry.

As well, if ProTrade is successful with their concept in football and baseball, it would support my idea regarding industry specific stock markets.

One of my thoughts about stock markets and raising money is that with today's and tomorrow's technology industry specific stock markets could be setup. It is doable to setup industry specific stock markets. So now the question becomes more related to if industry specific stock markets make sense logically.

One of the big benefits of industry stock markets is that they would be customized to their industry. Each industry stock market woudl have accounting standards that would be customized based upon each industry's key formulas and operational results rather than be generalized.

Let us look at the folllowing example dealing with the sports industry. Segmenting the sports industry into different sports: football, baseball, and golf.

Each one of these sports have different rules they are played by. Football and baseball are played with multiple players on two teams playing each other each game during one day. Golf is an individual sport played over multiple days to find a winner for each tournament.

Football looks at the total points each team has at the end of the game based upon touchdowns, extra points, and field goals. The team with the highest point total wins the game. Baseball looks at the number of runs each team scores after the 9th inning to see which team wins the game. Golf looks at the lowest number of strokes hit to determine which individual wins the tournament.

Football has statistics such as rushing yards, receiving yards, penalities, completions, inerceptions, and sacks. Baseball has statistics such as home runs, RBIs, earned run average (ERA), innings pitched, number of at bats, games won or lost as a pitcher, hitting average, and errors. Golf has statistics such as wins, majors won, top tens, cuts made and missed, scoring average, earnings, greens hit in regulation, putting average, and sand saves.

In football, the team strives to make the playoffs and win the NFL Superbowl. In baseball, the team strives to make the playoffs and win the MLB World Series. In golf, golfers try to win tournaments, win majors, make cuts, and earn enough money to stay on their respective santioned tour so they can play tournaments the following year.

In football and baseball, players are paid on a regular basis (for example, monthly or weekly) based upon their agreed upon salary. Golfers get paid after each tournament based upon their performance in the tournament.

Basically the figures are all formulated differently between the three different sports. And thus each sport should have its own stock marke which can be customized for it. You do not see one organization running the professional football, baseball, and golf operations. Rather you have the National Football League (NFL) governing the sport of professional football in the USA, the Major League Baseball (MLB) governing the sport of professional baseball, and the Professional Golf Association Tour (PGA Tour) governing the sport of professional golf. The same can be said for industry specific stock markets.