People have asked me my thoughts on the World Stock Exchange notecard, and particularly, section 3 where they claim

The WSE has over 95% market share and we ask that users express caution when dealing with the recent start-up exchanges as they are operating basic websites and trading platforms with extremely limited functionality compared to that offered by the WSE.

People have questioned how this 95% market share is calculated, and I must admit, I have no idea. So, I thought I would do a little digging into data available from the different exchanges. The International Stock Exchange (ISE) appears to provide the most detailed data, which can be aggregated. The Virtual Stock Exchange (VSTEX) provides detailed aggregated data. None of the other exchanges provide this sort of data in any readily accessible manner.

As a side comment, this calls into question the claims of extremely limited functionality that the WSE provides. Another key part of functionality that I rely on is the datafeeds that VSTEX, Ancapistan Capital Exchange (ACE), and Second Life Capital Exchange (SLCapEx) provide.

By taking this data, making projections out of data from ACE and adding in data from a recent report by SLCapEx, a fairly detailed picture emerges.

Over the past month, over 30 million Linden Dollars worth of stock exchanged hands. Approximately 41% was on the SLCapex, 38% on WSE, 10% on ACE, 6% on ISE and 5% on VSTEX.

At least from my experience and the data I’ve seen, WSE’s claim do not appear to bear up under scrutiny. That said, we would all be better off if all of the exchanges provided much better details about their historic volumes as well as historic data about deposits and withdrawals from the exchanges.