Since I first wrote about LLBT opening up its brokerage, another 2,751 shares have traded on their site. That’s still a very small number, but it is the end of the year and trading is thin. What is more significant is that 1,151 shares were of BBX, and that was enough to move it from the IPO stage to regular trading. This gives us a chance to look a little more closely at how things are likely to work.

The data feed that is so nice from SLCapEx, ACE and VSTEX is available from LLBT, so trades there can be analyzed more easily. I’ve added their feed into my handler and it will be interesting to see what data comes out. While 1,151 shares of BBX have traded hands at LLBT, there are currently sell orders for over 3,000 shares, so it appears as if LLBT will be playing market maker and trading its own book. Both of these are promising developments.

Currently, there are two buy orders for BBX on LLBT, for a total of 350 shares in the range of 3.00 to 3.01. Over on SLCapEx, which shows only the top ten buy orders, we have orders for over 10,000 shares in the range of 3.15 to 3.33. This, together with the 7,201 shares traded over the past 24 hours on SLCapEx, reflects another potential problem with buying stock on LLBT. When you want to sell your stock, will there be anyone around to buy it from you? How much will you have to give up to sell it on LLBT?

On the sell side, the numbers are also interesting and reflect the same sort of issue. There is currently an order to sell 8 shares of BBX at 3.33 on LLBT. There are orders to buy 1,100 shares of BBX at 3.33 over on SLCapEx. If the owner of the stocks on LLBT had bought them over on SLCapEx, or if the owner could transfer the stock to SLCapEx, the stock would have been sold by now. As a matter of fact, all but 150 shares of BBX sell orders that are shown on LLBT are below the lowest selling price on SLCapEx.

If you are a large, long-term holder of BBX stock, buying the stock low over on LLBT and holding may be a worthwhile risk. You still have the liquidity issues and the risk of problems with LLBT’s brokerage at some point, but you might be able to accumulate BBX stock, and other stocks at a lower price.

For me, liquidity is too low in the Second Life markets already, so I don’t have any current plans to start trading on LLBT. I’ll keep an eye on that, and if things change, I’ll start trading and let you know.