(MONEY Magazine) – So you think interest rates are going to rise again? Want to bet on it, but you're bamboozled by the futures market? Some University of Iowa professors can help you. Since late October, their private futures marketplace, the Iowa Electronic Markets (www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem), has let a select group of folks put money on the Fed's interest-rate decision-making. This is a get-your-feet-wet kind of marketplace: The maximum investment is $500 and, to avoid raising the ire of regulators at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, it's limited to students and academics--or those who can convince their university-affiliated friends or relatives to play the game for them.

It works like this: If you think the central bankers will raise rates at their meeting on Dec. 21, buy an FRup1299 contract (9[cents] on Nov. 23), which pays $1 if you're right. If you think Greenspan and company will reduce rates, plunk down that cash on an FRdown1299 contract (2[cents]); it too pays a dollar if you're right. The third option, the FRsame1299 contract (94[cents]), also pays a dollar. Notice how much more expensive it is to buy into FRsame1299? That's because common wisdom says that the Fed will hold steady.

Why are the Iowa professors doing this? Apart from the fun, they hope to learn whether their mini-market will prove to be more prescient than Wall Street's highly paid economists or the Chicago Board of Trade's complicated Federal funds futures market.

--AMY FELDMAN