Thursday, November 8, 2007

Welcome to Dragon's Bite

So what is the dragon's bite? It's a bimonthly column written for media distribution in financial magazines and websites related to second life. The first actual report will be submitted sometime around the 15th of this month with another released on the last couple of days of the month.

So what's it about? It's about the economic conditions within second life, notably the health of banks, stock exchanges, companies, and the news (though some would call it drama) associated with their operations. Second life is a game. Investing in it is more or less playing a game within a game which can be very educational about how micro cap markets may have worked before strong regulation come to power in 1929 or how a market may work in a libertarian's ideal economic layout. There is a lot of risk, but also a lot of opportunity. How you play will fundamentally drive your profits or losses.

Who writes it? Well, I do. I'm Maelstrom Baphomet. I run one of the companies listed on SL Capex, one of the larger second life stock exchanges. The company is called Dragon Global Diversified. I once was the chief operations officer for the AVIX stock exchange, which was SL Capex before JTF Bank purchased the exchange operations and moved it to their centers. Allenvest, the bank who sold AVIX and my former employer, is in rather sad shape now because of incidences related to the CEO. I won't go into the detail here, but you can read his claims on his web page.

Back on topic, I first entered the markets around April of 2007 and I trade on every stock exchange daily. I've had big wins, big losses, but in the end I gained a lot of experience. Every day I'm learning something new about how the SL economy functions. With my articles I seek to bring awareness to the events and happenings that may affect your portfolio performance. By the way, if you think these markets work like the real ones; prepare to lose your wallet. This column is not out to issue individual financial advice relating to the game so please base your personal investing options on your own avatar's situation not just the data provided here and if you do want my personal investing advice, come see me as I do charge for such. I do a lot of research before giving advice and believe me when I say there's a bit more to this market than just "buy low", "sell high" and there's never a guaranteed profit to be made so if my advice and research turns out bunk, well... in the least, I'm in the soup with you.

My final warning to all you new investors out there, "Buyer beware. Buy only who you trust." Trust is by far the most expensive commodity in these virtual markets.