Let's face it. Volumes on SL Capital Exchanges (all of them) are dismal, and liquidity is a major concern for investors. "Why should I plunk down several thousand of my hard-earn Linden Dollars if it'll take me months just to sell at a break-even price, and that's if I'm lucky?" With liquidity locked up, major investors will have a hard time realizing a profit on their investments, even if the market values of the particular stocks rise. So how do we fix this?
It seems that whenever a SL company goes belly-up, the CEO simply throws their hands in the air and walks away. That's because it's a possibility in Second Life. There is no chain connecting the CEO to the viewer which makes him or her responsible. Threats of legal action are simply idle talk, as even recovering something like $20,000 USD (about L$5.4 million) would be silly in the context of lawyers' and courts' fees (not to mention your time) to get it.
Certain exchanges have made progress in the realm of removing the complete anonymity of CEOs by requesting IDs for IPO clearance. Nevertheless, even if you know their ID, what good does it do you? Again, legal fees are too prohibitive.
I hesitate to say it, but I think it may be time to tie some more legal strings around the CEOs of SL companies. Some have suggested using promissory notes, but it sounds more like a fidelity bond issue to me, if there was an insurer who would ever cover it. The point remains the same, though: sending a message to CEOs that this is more than a game (in spite of the hypocritical boilerplate language at most exchanges), it is a responsibility which will reach out and slap you in real life if needed.
Before I let this tirade go too far, I do realize that this is not always something that a CEO wants to take on. I daresay that the salaries earned by most SL CEOs are nowhere near enough to compensate for the trouble which these legal ties could cause in real life. Maybe that's the answer, but I hope not.
I'd love to know how to restore investor confidence, but I'm just not seeing a way of doing it without giving investors some sort of recourse for CEO inadequacy or fraudulant activity.
Anyone else have other ideas? Comments?
Showing posts with label stock market. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stock market. Show all posts
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Saturday, July 26, 2008
It's been awhile...
So, it turns out I've been pretty bad at posting over the last few months. I've had things to keep me busy: one of my actuarial exams, work, RL moving, vacation, getting engaged, etc., so it's not like I'm short on excuses. Nevertheless, I think I should try to post and keep updating this thing periodically.
It seems like interest has waned in the market. I'm not entirely surprised, as most of the markets are rocked by scandal after scandal. New money coming in is kind of rare, as it seems that those who are involved with the markets currently are the only ones who would like to be involved. The lack of liquidity also frightens new investors, as the market value of securities is significantly more than the liquidation value (that is, if you sold all your shares as fast as you could) for almost every security, and even for modest amounts of shares.
For example, take SLR, the company I'm CFO for. (This is in no way a critique of my shareholders, but if I'm going to pick on a company, I might as well hit home.) Suppose I owned 10,000 shares of SLR right now. The market price shown on CapEx is L$6,500. However, if I actually tried to sell all 10,000 shares, I would receive (after commission) L$5,153.02, which is 79.3% of the displayed price. Make it 50,000 shares and I would only receive 12.9% of my displayed market value!!! And we're not talking vast sums of money here - 50,000 SLR shares at market is worth about $120 USD. Enough to care, but not enough to break most of us financially.
You can play this game with almost any stock on any market. There are exceptions, where management has taken care to set aside cash reserves to prevent this from happening, but by and large putting money into the market means you will need to take your time getting money out of the market.
I've heard the idea of market makers being tossed around before. For those of you who don't know, a market maker is a person/firm that makes money off the bid-ask spread in the market. They provide liquidity. However, from my previous actuarial exam (which I passed, by the way!), Modeling Financial Economics, market makers need options in order to protect themselves. There are techniques whereby market makers can insure themselves against large price changes, or even set themselves up to make money if the market doesn't move. However, these require options, which no exchange in SL has been willing to set up yet.
If any exchange in SL is seriously interested in setting up options and market making and similar techniques, please contact me. While I'm sure I'm not the only person in SL who understands how to make it work, I'm likely one of the few, and I would love to help.
I suppose the question is this: How do we revitalize the markets now? I think liquidity is the major issue, but I would like to hear what others think as well.
It seems like interest has waned in the market. I'm not entirely surprised, as most of the markets are rocked by scandal after scandal. New money coming in is kind of rare, as it seems that those who are involved with the markets currently are the only ones who would like to be involved. The lack of liquidity also frightens new investors, as the market value of securities is significantly more than the liquidation value (that is, if you sold all your shares as fast as you could) for almost every security, and even for modest amounts of shares.
For example, take SLR, the company I'm CFO for. (This is in no way a critique of my shareholders, but if I'm going to pick on a company, I might as well hit home.) Suppose I owned 10,000 shares of SLR right now. The market price shown on CapEx is L$6,500. However, if I actually tried to sell all 10,000 shares, I would receive (after commission) L$5,153.02, which is 79.3% of the displayed price. Make it 50,000 shares and I would only receive 12.9% of my displayed market value!!! And we're not talking vast sums of money here - 50,000 SLR shares at market is worth about $120 USD. Enough to care, but not enough to break most of us financially.
You can play this game with almost any stock on any market. There are exceptions, where management has taken care to set aside cash reserves to prevent this from happening, but by and large putting money into the market means you will need to take your time getting money out of the market.
I've heard the idea of market makers being tossed around before. For those of you who don't know, a market maker is a person/firm that makes money off the bid-ask spread in the market. They provide liquidity. However, from my previous actuarial exam (which I passed, by the way!), Modeling Financial Economics, market makers need options in order to protect themselves. There are techniques whereby market makers can insure themselves against large price changes, or even set themselves up to make money if the market doesn't move. However, these require options, which no exchange in SL has been willing to set up yet.
I suppose the question is this: How do we revitalize the markets now? I think liquidity is the major issue, but I would like to hear what others think as well.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Watching
This week should be an interesting week in SL finances. We've got a couple of big events which I expect to break, and there will of course be the others that we never see coming.
First up, I'm curious to see how the Metaverse Investment Fund does on its second week in the market. I wrote an (objective) article about the MIF on SL Reports, but this is my space to post so I don't have to be objective here - just respectful - something a few of the commentators on that story seem to be having trouble understanding.
Anyway, I've known Shaun since my early days in SL, and he's a good fox and has done very well investing. That being said, I don't think this market merits any new investments whatsoever, and I'm still not convinced about the 3.5% commissions on both sides of the transaction. That means you've got to earn about 6.9% just to break even! That's too steep for my value investment mindset.
Next, this week should see the re-opening of the World Stock Exchange. As was posted on January 6, 2008,
First up, I'm curious to see how the Metaverse Investment Fund does on its second week in the market. I wrote an (objective) article about the MIF on SL Reports, but this is my space to post so I don't have to be objective here - just respectful - something a few of the commentators on that story seem to be having trouble understanding.
Anyway, I've known Shaun since my early days in SL, and he's a good fox and has done very well investing. That being said, I don't think this market merits any new investments whatsoever, and I'm still not convinced about the 3.5% commissions on both sides of the transaction. That means you've got to earn about 6.9% just to break even! That's too steep for my value investment mindset.
Next, this week should see the re-opening of the World Stock Exchange. As was posted on January 6, 2008,
We are upgrading many areas of our services and the website as part of our launch for the WSE 4.0 platform. This is a huge undertaking and we have now entered a phase of development that requires the WSE to close all trading and transactions for "up to" 30 days.
I still haven't figured out why "up to" deserves quotes, but I do know how to count, and February 5th is 30 days from January 6th. Day traders get ready - I expect some serious volatility, mostly in the downward direction, when WSE goes live again. There will be lots of investors just wanting to get their cash out, and they've been cooped up for a whole month to get nervous about it. Extremely brave souls can find a good buyers market here. I'm just hoping we lose that audio announcement on the front page.
Finally, during this week we'll get a peek inside the financials of companies required to do monthly reporting. It'll be our first glance at how badly the banking ban hit the Second Life economy, and the Lindens should be releasing economic statistics sometime in the near future as well.
This past week, I posted my first set of financials for SL Reports...and only one person ventured a question. I'm hoping this is because my statements and commentary were sufficient, but honestly I was expecting an onslaught of inquiries, both on forums and in-world. Oh well - no news is good news...unless you need web traffic.
GM
Monday, January 7, 2008
BNT: An Example in Expectations
Over on AnCapEx, Brautigan & Tuck holdings has published their quarterly (ok, four-month) financial statements. To quote the announcement,
In my economics classes, we learned about some of the common market forces which affect demand curves, such as income, tastes and preferences, price of compliments/substitutes, and (most mysteriously to me) expectations.
In my finance classes, we learned about why investors choose to invest in a given security or project. We learned that investors prefer more money to less money, money sooner to money later, and less risk to more risk. The interplay of these preferences creates the wonderful stock charts we all know and love from First Life and Second Life.
I think that within these simple concepts lies the heart of the situation above. Despite having assets at three times the share price, investors simply don't expect to get anything from them. To be honest, BNT hasn't given them much to hope for: to my recollection, there has only been one dividend and no buybacks (although Intlibber did eliminate a large swath of his own holdings, this had little effect on the market price since it didn't affect the floating shares) to speak of. The most faithful shareholders of BNT, those that purchased the stock at its IPO on the World Stock Exchange, have lost 76% on their L$1.00 per share investment.
So is it any wonder that the price flutters with the whims of the day traders instead of reaching its NAV? With no history of dividends, buybacks, and little hope of actually getting L$0.72 per share for your BNT, the market seems perfectly justified (to me) in withholding its Lindens from purchasing anything but a token amount of BNT, and so it seems to have progressed.
There has been some comparison of BNT to Microsoft (NYSE:MSFT) in the past. I can't link to it because I don't think it has been explicitly written down before, but trust me on this one. However, the differences are beginning to show between the technological juggernaut and BNT holdings:
...while our profits are nothing to boast about, we were able to post nearly 27% growth in NAV despite a downturn in real estate asset values. NAV is now L$ 0.76, above the L$ 0.60 value BNT was at after we restructured our shares and eliminated 67 million of the CEOs personal shares in the largest voluntary elimination of personal wealth in SL history.Well, this is an interesting situation. As of this writing, the price of a share of BNT stock is L$0.24, and it has been around that level for some time. If the NAV of this stock is L$0.72 as claimed, why aren't market forces pushing it up to that level?
The growth in our NAV is confirmation that BNT's long term strategy of no dividends, focusing on growth, has been the right one. Despite an in-world depression, banking crash, and downturn in the capital markets as well as real estate markets, BNT continues to grow, and by growing is returning value to the shareholder the old fashioned way. This share value is not short term gimmickry like those CEOs who fake up big dividends that mostly winds up in their own pockets. This is real value in a real company.
In my economics classes, we learned about some of the common market forces which affect demand curves, such as income, tastes and preferences, price of compliments/substitutes, and (most mysteriously to me) expectations.
In my finance classes, we learned about why investors choose to invest in a given security or project. We learned that investors prefer more money to less money, money sooner to money later, and less risk to more risk. The interplay of these preferences creates the wonderful stock charts we all know and love from First Life and Second Life.
I think that within these simple concepts lies the heart of the situation above. Despite having assets at three times the share price, investors simply don't expect to get anything from them. To be honest, BNT hasn't given them much to hope for: to my recollection, there has only been one dividend and no buybacks (although Intlibber did eliminate a large swath of his own holdings, this had little effect on the market price since it didn't affect the floating shares) to speak of. The most faithful shareholders of BNT, those that purchased the stock at its IPO on the World Stock Exchange, have lost 76% on their L$1.00 per share investment.
So is it any wonder that the price flutters with the whims of the day traders instead of reaching its NAV? With no history of dividends, buybacks, and little hope of actually getting L$0.72 per share for your BNT, the market seems perfectly justified (to me) in withholding its Lindens from purchasing anything but a token amount of BNT, and so it seems to have progressed.
There has been some comparison of BNT to Microsoft (NYSE:MSFT) in the past. I can't link to it because I don't think it has been explicitly written down before, but trust me on this one. However, the differences are beginning to show between the technological juggernaut and BNT holdings:
- Microsoft has split nine (!!!) times in its history. BNT has split zero times.
- MSFT increased its stock price 273% (!!!) in its first year out of IPO. BNT has lost 76% to date (true, it hasn't been out a year yet, but at 3/4 of the way through the year, MSFT was still up about 160%).
- MSFT made no theories or announcements about how people were out to get them in their first year of operations (to my knowledge). BNT has made a few.
Friday, December 14, 2007
How to Make a Stock Index
There are, as I now count, six capital exchanges in Second Life. Yet only two of them (the ISE and VSTEX) have indices to measure that exchanges performance. There is also a service which provides indices and stock graphs, SL Quotes, available for public viewing. However, none of these aforementioned indices detail their methodology for how they produce this index (nor have I tried to replicate it). I thought, therefore, that it might be illustrative for readers to think about how a stock index is constructed and administered.
First, let's think about what a stock index should and should not do. We DO want it to
For Second Life, I'm going to alter that definition slightly because of some companies who have a LARGE volume of outstanding shares, but only a small portion of which is actually being traded, or in float:
A market capitalization gives you an idea of how large a company is on the stock market. A company with 1,000 shares trading at L$100 is smaller than a company with 1,000,000 shares trading at L$0.50, even though the L$100 stock price is higher. This is a very important concept when constructing an index, because it demonstrates that you should not form an index by simply constructing a portfolio of one share of each stock, because larger prices can give disproportionately higher representation to smaller companies. (Such an index, by the way, is called a price-weighted index.)
You can make price-weighted indices that function well (the link I used cites the Dow Jones Industrial Average as one), butI think it gives, or could give, disproportionate weight to companies that aren't actually affecting the market that much .
In contrast to this, a market-weighted index will weight each company by its market capitalization, thus giving the larger companies more say in how much the index swings.
So how does one actually construct such an index? Well, one way to do it would simply be to add up all the SLMCAPs and leave it at that. Mathematically:
However, this number is likely to be quite large and cumbersome, so instead, you need to divide it by some divisor D.
This divisor is very important, because it also allows the flexibility to adjust for buybacks, new entrants, secondary offers, dividends, and removals. You'll notice that I did not mention stock splits in the above. This is because (theoretically) a stock split does not affect market capitalization (ex: 2:1 stock split. Shares double, price halves, market cap stays the same). However, any of those other events would require a change in the divisor. To do this, you simply look at all values at time t, and solve:
For Dnew, using all the new SLMCAPs with the change incorporated into them.
How about an example? Assume you had a new entrant into the market (a new IPO). First, you find the current index value the normal way:
Then, you take that index value, and include the new company in the calculation, and solve for Dnew (I've bolded the new company for emphasis):
You can disregard the previous D at after you calculate the new value, and go forward using the new value of D until another event occurs such that you need to change it again.
Any questions? I don't know how difficult it would be for exchange programmers to incorporate such a system into their operations. And, as mentioned above, I have no idea how SLQuotes or VSTEX or the ISE calculate their indices. However, I think that each exchange should have some sort of index following it so that investors can more easily get an understanding of how the market has changed.
First, let's think about what a stock index should and should not do. We DO want it to
- Incorporate many securities (conceivably all of them from a given exchange)
- Adjust for new entrants and exits from the market, splits, and (probably) dividends
- Reflect market performance
- Be less volatile the least volatile stock, or more than the most volatile
- Spike or decline sharply just because of an entrance or exit by a security, split or dividend
Definition: MCAP = (Total outstanding shares) * (Price per share)
For Second Life, I'm going to alter that definition slightly because of some companies who have a LARGE volume of outstanding shares, but only a small portion of which is actually being traded, or in float:
Definition: SLMCAP = (Total shares in float) * (Price per share)
A market capitalization gives you an idea of how large a company is on the stock market. A company with 1,000 shares trading at L$100 is smaller than a company with 1,000,000 shares trading at L$0.50, even though the L$100 stock price is higher. This is a very important concept when constructing an index, because it demonstrates that you should not form an index by simply constructing a portfolio of one share of each stock, because larger prices can give disproportionately higher representation to smaller companies. (Such an index, by the way, is called a price-weighted index.)
You can make price-weighted indices that function well (the link I used cites the Dow Jones Industrial Average as one), but
In contrast to this, a market-weighted index will weight each company by its market capitalization, thus giving the larger companies more say in how much the index swings.
So how does one actually construct such an index? Well, one way to do it would simply be to add up all the SLMCAPs and leave it at that. Mathematically:
Index = SLMCAP1 + SLMCAP2 + ... + SLMCAPn
However, this number is likely to be quite large and cumbersome, so instead, you need to divide it by some divisor D.
Index = (SLMCAP1 + SLMCAP2 + ... + SLMCAPn)/D
This divisor is very important, because it also allows the flexibility to adjust for buybacks, new entrants, secondary offers, dividends, and removals. You'll notice that I did not mention stock splits in the above. This is because (theoretically) a stock split does not affect market capitalization (ex: 2:1 stock split. Shares double, price halves, market cap stays the same). However, any of those other events would require a change in the divisor. To do this, you simply look at all values at time t, and solve:
Indext = (SLMCAP1 + SLMCAP2 + ... + SLMCAPn)/Dnew
For Dnew, using all the new SLMCAPs with the change incorporated into them.
How about an example? Assume you had a new entrant into the market (a new IPO). First, you find the current index value the normal way:
Index = (SLMCAP1 + SLMCAP2 + ... + SLMCAPn)/D
Then, you take that index value, and include the new company in the calculation, and solve for Dnew (I've bolded the new company for emphasis):
Indext = (SLMCAP1 + SLMCAP2 + ... + SLMCAPn + SLMCAPn+1)/Dnew
You can disregard the previous D at after you calculate the new value, and go forward using the new value of D until another event occurs such that you need to change it again.
Any questions? I don't know how difficult it would be for exchange programmers to incorporate such a system into their operations. And, as mentioned above, I have no idea how SLQuotes or VSTEX or the ISE calculate their indices. However, I think that each exchange should have some sort of index following it so that investors can more easily get an understanding of how the market has changed.
Monday, November 19, 2007
The power of the dragon
Should anyone (including himself) doubt Maelstrom Baphomet's influence over the markets, notice that about 90 seconds after this group announcement:
STRONG Sell Recommendation LNL
Minimize your risk. There is a serious risk of Insolvency in this situation if LL does not step in.
This was posted at SLCapEx:
LNL: Temporary Trading Halt
The system has temporarily suspended trading on LNL due to price fluctuation. Trading is scheduled to resume at next market open.
Note: I will not attempt to keep pace with the quickly developing news of the bank failures. I recommend viewing The Dragon's Bite for the most up-to-date info.
STRONG Sell Recommendation LNL
Minimize your risk. There is a serious risk of Insolvency in this situation if LL does not step in.
This was posted at SLCapEx:
LNL: Temporary Trading Halt
The system has temporarily suspended trading on LNL due to price fluctuation. Trading is scheduled to resume at next market open.
Note: I will not attempt to keep pace with the quickly developing news of the bank failures. I recommend viewing The Dragon's Bite for the most up-to-date info.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
JTF, CapEx, SLR, and Xavier Mohr
Well considering I cannot get to sleep right now, I figured it would be a great opportunity for me to test-drive Guardian Market's new Second Chaos blog.
I figured there's no better subject to start off with than my affiliations and perceived positions with JT Financial Bank, the SL Capital Exchange, and SL Reports (CapEx: SLR).
I receive the question time and again from random people if I have quit JTF and CapEx, if I have had some form of "falling-out" with the management and so forth. The answers to those respectively are "kind-of" and "no."
I do not work as much as I used to with JT Financial or CapEx. There are several reasons for this.
Primarily, the duties were simply too much for me at a time when I was having stress with my real-life job, and at a time that I should have been focusing on SL Reports.
I have recently quit my real life job - a nightmare publishing position that started out as one thing and evolved into something else far more stressful over the course of 2+ years - it's something I might tell you about later in a different post.
In my exit from real-life work, I considered approaching Arbitrage Wise - a fabulous long-time friend and owner of SLCX and SLR, among many other fine companies - about working more for CapEx and JTF again... but I didn't.
The reason was I started waking up every morning and loading SLR on my screen. I started realizing that we had loyal readers and investors waiting on me to do things I had promised long ago but failed to follow through with.
Now, do I think that I was lazy... that I screwed up... that I wasted time that I should have been spending on SLR? All of those months that I was wrapped up in the bank, Wise Metaverse, and the exchange? No, I don't.
I am rarely arrogant, and I rarely boast, but take this for what it is - defense of my actions. I feel like I made a difference in our SL financial community.
For those of you that don't know, in July of this year Investor Allen started requiring real-life ID from CEOs. I complied grudgingly, even though my on-again-off-again friend who we now know as "Kyle Van Leuven" assurred me I didn't need to, but the owner of SLR, Arbitrage Wise, would not provide his info to Allen - I guess now we see where he was justified in his distrust of Allen, which is neither here nor there.
For the record though we now know Thanh (pronounced 'tawn' so I hear) Ho quite well, with him having spoke at Southern Methodist University and on Metaversed's Metanomics. But anyway...
Allen mentioned to me one late evening because of Arb's failure to comply, SLR would need to be delisted from AVIX. I really did not care at that point, but I did contact Arb and let him know. It's funny though... when Allen threatened this to me, I went off... totally... I told him exactly what I thought about his failed Ginko buyout, his own ID issues, and probably some other things I would not remember without pulling up IM logs... which I cannot publish here.
But Allen did not respond hatefully. He responded as a tired and upset young man... probably the same as I would... probably feeling much the same way I felt... like he just didn't care and didn't want to deal with it. It was at that point I asked him, "Allen, would you consider selling AVIX to JTF?"
He replied positively, and at that point I messaged Arb and said, "Arb, would you be interested in buying AVIX?"
LOL...
The rest is history, but at that time... for me... it was "ID problem solved, delisting problem solved, and software development for our own JTF exchange problem solved."
I was involved with JTF & CapEx on throughout July, August, & September before my real life caved in around me. SLR was a site in need of major assistance, I was stressed out all the time with work in RL, work in SL, and I was at the breaking point. Some of you know, and some of you do not... that I almost followed the footsteps Jasper by simply logging off. But I didn't.
I simply started stepping back, taking breaks from SL... managing things from the sidelines. It helped. I remained involved.
Yes, there were arguments along the way - bad ones. Ones that in your wildest dreams you could not imagine. Not just with me, but with all of the CapEx staff... but they were part of us building a better exchange for the SL investing public. And I think our arguments... our negotiations... did a fine job.
I am proud of what CapEx has become. I am proud of the new ID policies, the more careful review of IPOs, the new fraud detection mechanisms, the circuit breakers, the market makers... everything.
Bottom line though is the drama I have been through has nothing to do with why I stepped back from that world. CapEx now has a fine staff: Bo, Arb, Reina, Kadena, Cash, Sky, all the reps and managers you see in-world, and all the affiliates out in the field. They can manage without me.
I still randomly comment on IPO applications and receive faxes for the exchange, but not much else. And it's because I know they are a top-notch bunch with the brains and brut strength to get the job done.
So what's with SLR? Well I am happy to report that traffic is extraordinary... every morning when I wake up I update the SL community with the latest market news, and even an editorial every once in a while... be it popular or not.
I am proud to have just interviewed IntLibber "officially" about ACE... a great article. I talk to him often usually complaining about some random thing because I know he will listen and he is too nice to tell me to "eff off." I guess this is our first official press thing together though.
But the ACE interview is just the first in a series about all the exchanges. I will also be profiling CapEx, ISE, VSTEX.net, and WSE. Guardian even mentioned that I should profile Anshe's DSE... we'll see (that might be interesting though).
SLR is going well. But how about me?
Guys, I don't promise to be here forever. I have screwed up in the past of defining my first life by my Second Life, and I don't want to get back into that habit. I do have a real life. That is one reason that I *know* my real name shows up on this blog, yet I keep it here... to remind me there is something more out there.
I love to travel, I love to shop and dine, watch movies, do real life work... and this time of year... I love to drive around Northwest Oklahoma City looking at Christmas lights with my partner of five years.
So what is my immediate future in SL? SL Reports will continue to grow and prosper, we have even talked about overhauling our web template. Traffic will keep growing. So will revenue.
After that, who knows? I can't lie... my eyes and ears are always open, searching for someone to take over as SLR CEO. I continue to search, for someone that can do a better job than I have... but also continue on with my dream and my work, which I feel have made a difference here.
I doubt I will ever totally leave SL. I will probably always be the loudmouth with an opinion on something. I will probably still write and comment on stuff around CapEx, SLR, SLNN, and everywhere else. I definitely plan to continue blogging at Second Chaos. I am proud of that... which brings me to our closing.
I will leave you with just a couple thoughts tonight. First is that no matter what you do in SL, always endeavor to make a difference... don't do what's popular if you know in your heart that something else is the right choice. Second, is that remember Second Life is always just that... a SECOND LIFE. Don't define who you are by what happens here. Remember that you have a family that loves you and a world of opportunity awaiting you outside your front door.
Make a difference in your Second Life, but enjoy your first.
Until Next Time,
Xavier Mohr, CEO
SLReports.net
I figured there's no better subject to start off with than my affiliations and perceived positions with JT Financial Bank, the SL Capital Exchange, and SL Reports (CapEx: SLR).
I receive the question time and again from random people if I have quit JTF and CapEx, if I have had some form of "falling-out" with the management and so forth. The answers to those respectively are "kind-of" and "no."
I do not work as much as I used to with JT Financial or CapEx. There are several reasons for this.
Primarily, the duties were simply too much for me at a time when I was having stress with my real-life job, and at a time that I should have been focusing on SL Reports.
I have recently quit my real life job - a nightmare publishing position that started out as one thing and evolved into something else far more stressful over the course of 2+ years - it's something I might tell you about later in a different post.
In my exit from real-life work, I considered approaching Arbitrage Wise - a fabulous long-time friend and owner of SLCX and SLR, among many other fine companies - about working more for CapEx and JTF again... but I didn't.
The reason was I started waking up every morning and loading SLR on my screen. I started realizing that we had loyal readers and investors waiting on me to do things I had promised long ago but failed to follow through with.
Now, do I think that I was lazy... that I screwed up... that I wasted time that I should have been spending on SLR? All of those months that I was wrapped up in the bank, Wise Metaverse, and the exchange? No, I don't.
I am rarely arrogant, and I rarely boast, but take this for what it is - defense of my actions. I feel like I made a difference in our SL financial community.
For those of you that don't know, in July of this year Investor Allen started requiring real-life ID from CEOs. I complied grudgingly, even though my on-again-off-again friend who we now know as "Kyle Van Leuven" assurred me I didn't need to, but the owner of SLR, Arbitrage Wise, would not provide his info to Allen - I guess now we see where he was justified in his distrust of Allen, which is neither here nor there.
For the record though we now know Thanh (pronounced 'tawn' so I hear) Ho quite well, with him having spoke at Southern Methodist University and on Metaversed's Metanomics. But anyway...
Allen mentioned to me one late evening because of Arb's failure to comply, SLR would need to be delisted from AVIX. I really did not care at that point, but I did contact Arb and let him know. It's funny though... when Allen threatened this to me, I went off... totally... I told him exactly what I thought about his failed Ginko buyout, his own ID issues, and probably some other things I would not remember without pulling up IM logs... which I cannot publish here.
But Allen did not respond hatefully. He responded as a tired and upset young man... probably the same as I would... probably feeling much the same way I felt... like he just didn't care and didn't want to deal with it. It was at that point I asked him, "Allen, would you consider selling AVIX to JTF?"
He replied positively, and at that point I messaged Arb and said, "Arb, would you be interested in buying AVIX?"
LOL...
The rest is history, but at that time... for me... it was "ID problem solved, delisting problem solved, and software development for our own JTF exchange problem solved."
I was involved with JTF & CapEx on throughout July, August, & September before my real life caved in around me. SLR was a site in need of major assistance, I was stressed out all the time with work in RL, work in SL, and I was at the breaking point. Some of you know, and some of you do not... that I almost followed the footsteps Jasper by simply logging off. But I didn't.
I simply started stepping back, taking breaks from SL... managing things from the sidelines. It helped. I remained involved.
Yes, there were arguments along the way - bad ones. Ones that in your wildest dreams you could not imagine. Not just with me, but with all of the CapEx staff... but they were part of us building a better exchange for the SL investing public. And I think our arguments... our negotiations... did a fine job.
I am proud of what CapEx has become. I am proud of the new ID policies, the more careful review of IPOs, the new fraud detection mechanisms, the circuit breakers, the market makers... everything.
Bottom line though is the drama I have been through has nothing to do with why I stepped back from that world. CapEx now has a fine staff: Bo, Arb, Reina, Kadena, Cash, Sky, all the reps and managers you see in-world, and all the affiliates out in the field. They can manage without me.
I still randomly comment on IPO applications and receive faxes for the exchange, but not much else. And it's because I know they are a top-notch bunch with the brains and brut strength to get the job done.
So what's with SLR? Well I am happy to report that traffic is extraordinary... every morning when I wake up I update the SL community with the latest market news, and even an editorial every once in a while... be it popular or not.
I am proud to have just interviewed IntLibber "officially" about ACE... a great article. I talk to him often usually complaining about some random thing because I know he will listen and he is too nice to tell me to "eff off." I guess this is our first official press thing together though.
But the ACE interview is just the first in a series about all the exchanges. I will also be profiling CapEx, ISE, VSTEX.net, and WSE. Guardian even mentioned that I should profile Anshe's DSE... we'll see (that might be interesting though).
SLR is going well. But how about me?
Guys, I don't promise to be here forever. I have screwed up in the past of defining my first life by my Second Life, and I don't want to get back into that habit. I do have a real life. That is one reason that I *know* my real name shows up on this blog, yet I keep it here... to remind me there is something more out there.
I love to travel, I love to shop and dine, watch movies, do real life work... and this time of year... I love to drive around Northwest Oklahoma City looking at Christmas lights with my partner of five years.
So what is my immediate future in SL? SL Reports will continue to grow and prosper, we have even talked about overhauling our web template. Traffic will keep growing. So will revenue.
After that, who knows? I can't lie... my eyes and ears are always open, searching for someone to take over as SLR CEO. I continue to search, for someone that can do a better job than I have... but also continue on with my dream and my work, which I feel have made a difference here.
I doubt I will ever totally leave SL. I will probably always be the loudmouth with an opinion on something. I will probably still write and comment on stuff around CapEx, SLR, SLNN, and everywhere else. I definitely plan to continue blogging at Second Chaos. I am proud of that... which brings me to our closing.
I will leave you with just a couple thoughts tonight. First is that no matter what you do in SL, always endeavor to make a difference... don't do what's popular if you know in your heart that something else is the right choice. Second, is that remember Second Life is always just that... a SECOND LIFE. Don't define who you are by what happens here. Remember that you have a family that loves you and a world of opportunity awaiting you outside your front door.
Make a difference in your Second Life, but enjoy your first.
Until Next Time,
Xavier Mohr, CEO
SLReports.net
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)