A Gamer's Advice for playing the Stock Market.

Could looking at the market from the point of view of a gamer shed some light on preventing terrible losses in the real stock market?  Does being a gamer provide helpful insight into 'the market'?  Can we gamers prosper by looking at the elements of the stock market as we look at the elements of games?  Lets explore those questions with a new series of blog posts.  These posts will get released on Fridays.  If this kind of thing seems interesting, let me know in the comments below.

Economic downturn.  It scares everyone who is trying to 'play the market'.  Scares them more then their first Creeper attack, because a downturn is long and drawn out, not sudden and explosive.  Watching your portfolio shrink is the creeping fear of disaster, not the sudden death of a gunshot.  In my time I've worked at a Mutual Fund Company and a Private Student Loan Company.  My investment education started at the height of the market in 2008.  An employee purchase program sounded like a great idea.  A few hundred dollars set aside from my paycheck went into a $45 dollar stock, which  promptly fell to around a $1.00 over the next couple months.  The official toll: 96.96%.  My advice comes from my experiences, my business education, and reading about investing.

If there are any topics that you would like to look at through the lens of gaming, leave a comment.  They'll get written up in this series.  So post them now to get your burning questions in.  Oh, and I am not a professional so please consult with a trained financial professional before making any large stock purchases...  Or even small ones.  Next Friday we going to talk basics of investing for gamers.  First Strategy: Know the playing field.

One really exciting thing coming up is the release of Diablo III.  There have been a few ruffled feathers from
gamers of late about some of the protection surrounding the game.  I for one am going to be thinking more about the in game economy.  Diablo III will allow players to auction off goods in either gold, or real currency!  There is major opportunity for applying lessons learned on the real stock market to the virtual one, and vice versa.  One great resource is The Diablo 3 gold guide.  The guide is written by Markco Polo who wrote the amazing Just My Two Copper blog, and also The Traffic Blogger.  Markco does a ton of research and experiments into the best ways to make gold, and now real money in Blizzards Games.  Hopefully this series of posts will have good crossover and we'll be able to highlight some real world economic effects using the games economy!