Markets Aflutter in SL, Too

Just as Wall Street has been in upheaval, it’s been a wild week in the SL financial markets, and it is beginning to make casino gambling look like a safer haven for your lindens. Well, until LL pulled the plug on all that, but never mind ….

First, the World Stock Exchange reportedly was hacked. I don’t know anything else about it so I can’t comment, but there have been a rush of delistings and transfers over to other exchanges, such as the Allenvest International Exchange …

Which until a couple of days ago was a buyout target for Ginko Financial, which had its Ginko Perpetual Bonds offering listed there, until the deal fell through …

… and Ginko moved its bond listing over to the World Stock Exchange!

And that brings us back to Allenvest (AVIX) which today announced it is selling 70% of its operation to JT Financial. The two principals, Investor Allen of AIVX and Arbitrage Wise of JTF, announced the details in a freewheeling shareholder meeting this Friday afternoon. (It lasted until the sim restarted.)

I still don’t know what it’s all going to mean for me and my paltry investment, but today was a good lesson in the value of riding out the storm. At one point shares of AIVX stock traded at 2 cents each; later it zoomed to 1.00. Nervous nellies selling, opportunity seekers buying? I still haven’t recovered all of my initial investment into AIVX-listed stocks, but some of that is my fault for buying in at market peak on one stock. I’m still better off than friends who bought just the stocks someone else picked for them. I don’t know what’s going to happen to my Ginko bond investment.

Some of this angst is the risk you run when you take your money out from under the mattress and hand it to someone to invest for you, just like in RL … but in RL I would have a lot more information on which to do due diligence and a government framework to keep people more or less honest and accountable.

Now to make sure my Ginko money is still there … I might just put it all back under the mattress again.

Update: I just tried to take L$5000 out to move to another bank. Sure, I can have the money but I have to wait until 1,213 people ahead of me get their money.