This sounds, especially the futures market part, like Marc Stiegler's 1999 novel Earthweb. Quoting from the plot summary on Wikipedia:
EarthWeb is set in a future where Earth faces a recurring attack every five yearsevery five years by a massive spaceship of unknown origin. Named Shivas, after the Hindu deity, these ships are vast, robot-crewed, and progressively more advanced. The apparent ultimate goal of the Shivas is the total extermination of the human population on Earth.
Highly trained hero commando squads, known as Angels, infiltrate and attempt to destroy each Shiva using data gathered through an expanded, global version of the internet.
A crucial feature of this web are the 'castpoints' (derived from 'forecast') where individuals can wager money on the internal layout of each Shiva and the potential solutions to various problems the Angels might encounter within the ship. The betting system ensures the prominence of beneficial ideas (those most wagered on), and rewards those skilled at identifying these good ideas by increasing their winnings, thereby enhancing their influence on future idea selection.
The novel had its own dedicated website with additional resources that was mentioned in the appendix:
If you have trouble finding any of these pages in your Web archive, to find other pointers go to: http://www.the-earthweb.com