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,

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