<br />Maybe we could get our tokens certified somewhere? We give our tokens to TD and TD stores it in its warehouse vault somewhere. In return we get a certified list of our tokens and we can use them as if they were the tokens themselves. Hell, I'd probably pay for that. We can even trade the paper bits like stocks and bonds and instead of the actual tokens themselves.<br />
<br /><br />I can see it now! The "Trading Pit," where hawkish token-traders sell Dwarven Steel futures to wild speculators, while praying for a jump in the blue-chippie stocks and hedging their bets with Inflation-Protected-Trading-Bars!<br /><br /><br />INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – What is it about October and tokens?<br /><br />Despite another big advance on Friday, paper losses in the U.S. token market came to 2.5 million gold pieces for the month, according to the Treasure Token 200 Composite Index, which represents nearly all rare and ultra-rare token stocks traded in the United States. The 17.7 percent decline was the worst since the 23 percent drop in October 2004. <br /><br />The Purple tank-classes rose 144 points on Friday, giving the market its only back-to-back gains of the month and its best week since mid-July 2006. <br /><br />But it was a trick-or-treat month. Fear coursed through the markets in a way that hadn't been seen for more than two decades, causing rushed selling by everyone from low-level newbies to million-token hedge funds. <br />The TT200 plummeted 2,400 points in the month's first eight trading days, and by Friday there were only three days when it didn't finish the session with a triple-digit movement. <br /><br />October was the month when the credit crisis that started squeezing GenCon institutions earlier in the fall spilled into the mainstream, hampering traders' willingness to lend and newbies' ability to borrow, and ultimately taking huge chunks out of token futures and other stock funds. <br /><br />Meanwhile, the ripple effect spread to the rest of the Greyhawk economy and caused similar carnage on token markets in SoCal and beyond amid fears of a deep recession. <br /><br />"It seems like it all came together in October," said Smakdown, chief investment officer at Smak Industries. "You had people recognize that things were worse than normal with the credit crisis. It just sort of collapsed all into that one period."<br /> <br />Experts aren't sure why October has been such a cursed month for token market meltdowns -- although September has registered the biggest declines of any month historically. <br /><br />But October's reputation is well known at GenCon, as is the fact that token stocks perform much worse during the six-month period starting with October than during the rest of the year. Since it began tracking, the Treasure Token 200 index has gained 7 percent annually from April through September and just 1 percent from October through March. <br /><br />Gary Aswegan, level 5 player from the acclaimed Team Token, thinks it's unfair to suggest that individual investors panicked or acted irrationally in the past month. <br /><br />"There was a basis for the fear," he said. "There was a desire to put their gold pieces somewhere safer. If everyone at GenCon has rushed out the doors, why is it that we tell everybody buying at home they shouldn't panic?" <br /><br />The seeds of October's losses were sown in September. Investors already were feeling jittery about the long period of time until the next convention, as the consequences of the collapse in housing prices crept into every corner of the economy. <br /><br />The news got stunningly worse on Sunday, Sept. 14 -- a pivotal day that set stocks' meltdown in motion. That was the day the government refused to bail out Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. after a weekend of intense negotiations, leaving the investment house to file for bankruptcy the next day. <br /><br />The fallout from the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history was enormous and more than True Dungeon officials foresaw. It was the second failure of a giant investment bank, following Bear Stearns Cos. earlier in the year, and it removed an important foundation from an already-stressed financial system. <br /><br />High level players did not want to lend to anyone, which threatened such basic business operations as surviving the dungeon, and made it difficult for newbies to get red or purple loans. <br /><br />It became clear something had to be done or the game economy would collapse in the absence of lending. But it proved too late for even a 5000 token emergency “proxy purple” rescue of lending institutions to stop the market carnage. <br />The player base's rejection of the bailout on Sept. 29 sent the TT200 tumbling a then-record 777 points and set the stage for an even worse October. <br /><br />Jeff Martin stepped in and passed a modified rescue package on Oct. 3, announcing a massive event scheduled for early April where tokens can be used, but by then an internet-wide alarm had been sounded about the likelihood of a punishing token recession, and collectors, traders, and hedge funds began fleeing the market. The TT200 plummeted from a high of 10,882.52 on Oct. 1 to the month's in-trading low of 7,882.52 on Oct. 10. <br /><br />Dave Radtke, chief token officer at True Dungeon Ltd in Carbondale Illinois., sees the stress etched on gamer's faces when he is at the game shop, or elsewhere around town. <br /><br />"They're hurting. Their 401(token) is down," he said. "There is more hand-wringing when I talk to collectors now than I have seen in several cycles." <br /><br />The TT200 recovered and then plunged lower again during a month that set records for volatility and for the biggest point losses and gains during a single session. On Monday the blue-chippie index closed at a 5 1/2-month low of 8,175.77, but it never closed below 8,000. <br /><br />The gains on Thursday and Friday left it up a whopping 11 percent for the week. But the TT200 remains down 34 percent from the high set just 13 1/2 months ago. <br /><br />With fear having subsided, the market's future now hinges on the health of the True Realm event. Token Traders worldwide have followed Martin’s lead in taking unprecedented action to prop up the trading system, but it's not clear what impact that will have in a global recession. <br /><br />"The token policy action has been enormous," said Henwy, a portfolio manager at Federated Token Investors Inc. "The system is now, I'd say, open for business. Now the question is, will it occur?"<br /><br />
