RONI-and-IODMI Market

Market Information: Relative Oceanic Nino Index (RONI) and Indian Ocean Dipole Mode Index (IODMI)

Historic ENSO and IOD series
Rolling 3-month averages of indices for El Niño-Southern Oscillation (Relative Oceanic Niño Index, RONI) and the Indian Ocean Dipole (Indian Ocean Dipole Mode Index, IODMI). [Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Prediction. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology also publishes weekly versions of these indices.]

Market Specification:

Market Overview

Field Details
Market OPER: RONI-IODMI-XXX-YYYY-MMM
where YYYY is the calendar year, MMM is the three-month interval, and XXX is the sequential index of the YYYY-MMM RONI-IODMI market.
Strip of Markets RONI-IODMI-001-2026-SON
RONI-IODMI-002-2027-DJF
RONI-IODMI-003-2027-MAM
RONI-IODMI-004-2027-JJA
UNDERLYING Relative Oceanic Nino Index (RONI) and Indian Ocean Dipole Mode Index (IODMI).
PREDICTION PERIOD 3-month averages: DJF, MAM, JJA, SON.
PREDICTION HORIZON Initially, the upcoming season, but markets for later seasons could be introduced.

Outcome Space

Field Details
Dimensions Two-dimensional market
Variables 1. Relative Oceanic Nino Index (RONI)
2. Indian Ocean Dipole Mode Index (IODMI)
Unit n/a
Variable Type Continuous
VALUES RONI: -3 to +3 in intervals of 0.2 with open intervals on either end (32 intervals)
IODMI: -2 to +3 in intervals of 0.2 with open intervals on either end (22 intervals)
NUMBER OF OUTCOMES 22 x 32 = 704

Market Hours

Field Details
Opening Date/Time May 2026
Closing Date/Time end of relevant 3-month period

Settlement

Field Details
Primary Data Source RONI: NOAA
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/RONI.ascii.txt
IODMI: NOAA
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/international/ocean_monitoring/IODMI/mnth.ersstv5.clim19912020.dmi_current.txt
Secondary Data Source Australian Bureau of Meteorology
https://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/
monitors both ENSO and IOD
Source Reporting Date/Time Last working day of the month following the last month of the averaging period.
Settlement Date/Time Last working day of the month following the last month of the averaging period.

Initialization

Field Details
Initialization Type Set prices based on historical climatology since 1950.

Initial prices in 2-dimensional market


Instructions

Description of Market

This market is to jointly predict the Relative Oceanic Nino Index (RONI) and the Indian Ocean Dipole Mode Index (IODMI). These are indicators of the state of El Nino-Southern Oscillation and the Indian Ocean Dipole respectively.

The market is for the value of the RONI averaged over the 3-month period designated in the market’s name and the value of the IODMI over the same 3-month period.

The time series of RONI is available at:
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/RONI.ascii.txt while the time series of IODMI is available at:
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/international/ocean_monitoring/IODMI/mnth.ersstv5.clim19912020.dmi_current.txt

Instructions for Trading

Contracts

The market is based on individual outcomes. You can place bets and gain credits in the market through the trading of contracts — custom bets defined by you. A contract is a collection of weights for one or more of the outcomes for the market. Each unit of the contract that you own will pay out a number of credits equal to the weight of the event that occurs.

You can create contracts within the application by clicking on outcomes to select or deselect them, or by dragging to select groups of outcomes at once. Contracts created this way will have a weight of 1 on all selected outcomes and 0 for other outcomes, meaning each unit of these contracts will pay out 1.0 credit if the outcome that the market is settled at is one of the selected ones.

Getting Quotes and Trading

Once you have defined a contract you can get a price quote for the quantity you wish to buy. When getting a quote, you either specify the number you want to buy or specify what you want your final holding of that contract to be. You can then choose to trade at the quoted amount, which will create an order for the specified number of contracts.

If you wish to sell contracts you already own you can get a price quote in the same way. The price quoted might not be the price that you trade at, depending on whether other players have placed bets between getting the quote and placing the order. If the price moves against you more than 1% from the quoted amount, your order will be rejected.

Shorting

You cannot “short” contracts — that is, sell contracts you haven’t previously bought. However, because the outcome space covers all possible outcomes and the prices sum to 1.00, if you believe any outcomes are overpriced it follows that other outcomes must be underpriced. You can take advantage of the mispricing by buying the underpriced outcomes.


Kim Kaivanto
Kim Kaivanto
Director of CRUCIAL

economics and finance, normative and behavioural, academic and applied