I have been a major league baseball fan for years, but it was not until last week during one of my routine visits to my favorite baseball team’s website (which shall remain nameless as I am embarrassed by their performance), that I realized a small ad in the lower left corner of the screen. The ad linked me to protrade.com where I came across the world’s only online forum for trading and exchanging professional sports teams and players. The site has established a formula that computes a player’s (or team’s) value based on a their current performance. I immediately could see the connections the our class.

If members of the site think that a player or team is undervalued they will choose to buy a certain number of shares sold at a given price. When a player is overvalued the community will choose to sell the player which will result in their values dropping. After I joined the free website, I found that the site has set up a perfect scenario for the forming of information cascades to occur. If a player is receiving a lot of attention, the site will reveal how the community is reacting as they post a list with the best and worst movers over the last 24 hours. The protrade member will be able to see how much of a percentile gain (or loss) a player has experienced and furthermore will show the general leaning toward that player. Thus a player might be titled a ’strong buy’, a ’strong sell’, or a ‘hold’. Thus when the next person examines a player’s earning potential they will see where the market is leaning in regards to that player, thus triggering an information cascade. Even if it is a odd occurrence of the phenomenon, nonetheless the website clearly exhibits the concept of an information cascade.