Stock Investing

1. I know when I invested, I invested an amount that I could afford to lose.

2. I know that there is nothing I can do to get the money back, short of legal action, which of course is hardly worth the effort. My investment wont buy an hour of a lawyers time in RL but its still significant amount of funds within SL.

The stock has disappeared (I think the amount of funds was not raised) and since I am not educated in buying this stuff, I don't know what my next step would be. Its one thing to invest in a company and potentially lose your money, but its another thing when the person you invested in never is able to touch the money.

Logically, the money I paid bought stock which is owned by the creator of the company. If I wanted to cash out, then I sell the stock back to the creator. But this scenario doesn't make any sense when the trading company is holding your money, removes the stock offering and does not provide assistance in what you do AFTER you invest.

Its very possible there is something I just have not discovered yet and its all relatively simple, or maybe not?

So far this situation has soured my desire to invest through stocks, its just better to not have more hands touching your money. Next time, I'll just loan the money.

Thanks for your input!!

Sorry to hear that Xplorer... but I can't figure out how "banks" and "investments" can actually make money for all concerned in SL... short of taking yours and mine that is. There have been other strands on this particular topic you might look up.


I think next time, if you really really REALLY wanted to lend money...don't! Or at the very least have a VERY good handle on who you're lending the money to....

Inc

They make money the same way they do in RL...

1. They get you to give them your money.
2. They use that money to buy something, or build something, and then sell those things at a profit, or they lend the money to someone and charge interest.
3. They pay you some of what your money earned and keep the rest as profit for their efforts.

People could probably better help if you stated specifics in a forum where that was okay - say, secondcitizen.com or someplace like that.

Even the basic who/what/why/where/how isn't really appropriate here, so... not much one can say.

Regardless, it's *very* hard to know who is a crook, and who gave their best efforts and just out-and-out failed in good faith.

Businesses fail all the time in SL, I'd hate to guess the hourly rate but I'm sure it's significant. That said, I'm sure the rate of scams per hour is far higher.

Good luck, in any case.

Yeah, I had to break this down for a group when I was withdrawing from the commission work they wanted me to do...

Since there is no way to "sue" anyone in SL at the non-lawyer-with-more-money-than-sense level all business in SL is based solely on trust.

If you can't trust that person at the same level you are going to be working with them (i.e. large sums of money or complete mod/trans/copy rights to your own work) then you shouldn't do business with them.

I had a similar situation that I avoided. I was going to work with a certain "dark cyberpunk" RP group that is making a new island. They saw one of my mech suits from the military group I created and decided they wanted a group of their own for RP. There was some confusion on details but once that was figured out I came to find out that they were essentially going to rip off my group's whole concept and name (34th MHTF as opposed to my 39th MHTF). When I brought up how this was too similar the response was "yeah, but it's legal!"

I got them to change the name and still wanted to work with them because of how popular their current sim is. I saw it as an advertising opportunity if I helped them make custom mech suits. The issue had been resolved and I thought all was well.

Well, after a little while the whole situation was eating away at me. If these guys were so quick and willing to steal my idea and take credit, what would stop them from stealing my actual work? I would have had to give up copy/mod/trans versions of some of my work so they could do what they needed as far as extra scripting and whatnot.

I eventually told them I wasn't going to work with them and broke it down in the same way I just did.

You have to be super careful when dealing with your work and with large sums of money which turn into sizeable sums of RL$. There's little or no recourse these days...and there won't be unless a new system came in place that lessened the level of anonymity we have in SL. I don't think I want that to happen, though.

Dont't even know what is the incentive of buying stock in SL. It's not like you have a lack of investment opptunities in RL with all the stocks and mutual funds in the RL.

If this investment was made on the WSE dont fair, you just need to wait for them to rollback the IPO and your funds will be returned.

This happens quite often to companys that cannot raise enough interest in their company and therefore enough capital.

If it hasnt been rolled back yet i suggest contacting luke connell.

Once it is rolled back your account will be credited with your money.

Unfortunately, if the company has made it out of the IPO stage and run with the money, you are screwed.