That should be a bannable offense.

Well I think the OP has all rights to exploit the system if it's possible. The OP shouldn't be the one to blame but those who overlooked the system. I think it's smart of you to have brought this forward OP. Time for OOO to find a solution :)

He doesn't have ''all the right'' to exploit anything.

Is that the jargon you tell yourself so you can sleep properly at night?

Sorry alpha but that's just the way it is bro. If it's possible nor matter if intentional of not intentional, he can do whatever he wants untill it's fixed. It's not like i'm supporting it. I'm just as much against it as any other person but what do u wanna do? Stop them? Stop me? But how do you find out in the first place I am doing such a thing? The OP at least had the decency to be up front.

Well gee, I dunno, maybe just the fact it slowly but suredly increases the prices even if it drops back to the original prices and is just a dirty way to make CR.

You are doing it all wrong.

The first way to trade CE is through the auction house
Let's look at a few principles:

1.) The higher the price of energy, the greater the 2% trading fee hits you, the less profit you make.
From your example your cheapest sale only nets you 5740.84 because of tax, if this is purchased at 5716, then you're earning peanuts, especially with such small volumes.

2.) Buying and selling at the same time inflates CE prices.
What you are doing actively hurts your own ability to make money

What you're doing is fine and dandy if you enjoy the quick buck, but quite honestly I find that a waste of time. But there is real money is trading through seasons.

For example. Buy when a new crown sink is introduced, or new incentives to buy energy are introduced, such as new rose regalia.
Hold it.
And sell during power surge weekend.

Right now you shouldn't be buying energy at all. Unless you want to craft or run the clockworks.
Buy some at November, right before they announce another power surge, and get your harvest by Christmas
.
[BUT I WANT A QUICK BUCK]
Well, if that's what you really want, then I suggest TAX EVASION. You can avoid the trouble of the 2% rake by selling directly to people, try Haven 1.

Unpleasant smell?

I don't get what he is doing wrong? Buying CE for a low price and setting it at a higher price? It isn't exploitation.

@Kwizzy - Took a good long look at the picture but I can't see what you're trying to explain.

Not explaining anything, think of it as a puzzle :) For a hint just watch the market instead of bidding.

It'll be bad for everyone if there were easy to follow guides & tips on the forum. Someone with big pockets could use them to control the market and force prices one way or another. None of us want to see someone raise CE prices to 6600, then drop it back down to 5500, in a couple hours & make a killing from everyone else.

Umm... no. Anyone really "working the market" doesn't use their own money to change the prices, they use yours.

That's all I'll say on this topic - /wave

"Exploits and abuse of bugs
Do not abuse broken game mechanics! - Sometimes bugs or oversights in the game design may occur. An example would be a situation that allowed a knight to generate free money within the game. If a bug is found, you are expected to report it immediately and not take advantage of it. Exploiting, publicizing or encouraging others to exploit bugs, design oversights or other issues is not acceptable."

Next time read the Terms of service.

The more people who engage in arbitrage, the more likely the spread narrows to the point of unprofitability, because to actually execute trades you inch closer and closer to the market equilibrium. The more participants there are in a market, the more liquid it is, the more likely that trades will be executed and that you find a price that is fairer. This is pretty well established in economics.

In the end, this means there is much less volatility in the energy market and that you will be able to find a buyer or seller at a stable price far more quickly. It's no more "exploitative" than selling goods that you created from mist energy for crowns and ultimately it becomes self-correcting if your brilliant idea to sell Cutters attracts dozens of imitators, just like arbitrage.

As a money making practice, your ROI is likely to be miniscule or even negative. As of the time of this post, the spot market for energy is 5803 bid/ 5900 offer, which after commission is a loss of 69 crowns if you go in such a trade. If you're willing to spend a lot of time to babysit the market for 50 crown returns (a 0.8% ROI), I'm not one to say how people can use their leisure time.

Sure, it's perfectly fine, legally (technically). But somehow, the idea that people were paying five times as much for the materials I bought on "sale" got to me after a while...

Only Three Rings has the stats on the total energy supply in the game, but I suspect that it's enormous. This requires resources that even the largest guilds won't have. Moreover, it can be created on demand; for a certain segment of the player base on the fence, highly expensive energy would push them to just buy it from Three Rings directly. So even if you could double the crown cost for energy, that would be only temporary when people shrug and whip out their credit cards. That would mean the monopolists would quickly lose crowns when that energy comes into the system and prices come back down due to increased supply. If your consortium purchased 1,000,000 energy on the markets, and another 100,000 comes online, you can't possibly sustain any high prices, and if you try to cash out at best your transactions cancel out, but more likely you just cause a crash leaving your holdings a fraction of the value you paid for it. People strictly on the F2P model will ride it out on their daily mist energy allowance, weakening the consortium's position further.

Anyone trying to corner the market on a commodity that is deeply liquid and can be created out of thin air is playing a very dangerous game, and aren't likely to be the winners in any such attempt.

Also, if someone is conspiring with an insider, well, you might as well leave the game. Playing the game implies that you trust the developers to not arbitrarily screw you over, so if you have to raise that idea there's honestly no point in continuing because the integrity of the system is suspect and bailing out is the rational response.

Yep, working as intended. I'm all for it.

In fact, I manipulate the energy market sometimes. Sure it is boring, but I like watching graphs on Bloomberg (also sometimes) so it's nothing to me. And CE costs less and less cr while I'm doing it rather than up.

The 2% crowns tax destroys crowns which deflates the value of CE. This crown destruction is necessary to fight free-to-players like Hova and prevent them from (unintentionally) inflating the value of CE through their daily activities like running the Clockworks, crafting and unbinding.

Thirst
Volebamus, allow me to provide an example on how the market may be manipulated.
Do note that I, nor probably anyone but alliances of the wealthiest guilds, lack the resources for these plans.
1.) First (and most ridiculous), is simply and rapidly buying ALL reasonably priced energy in the market in order to gain full control over setting it's prices. Allowing you to practically double prices and your money over night. (See: Cornering the Market).

This will not work. Whenever people say this, they don't understand exactly how much in the minority they are, OR are crazy enough to be willing to lose tons in the process. Like I said before, this claim is made seemingly every month, and with some people bold enough to make a collective of 100k CE or so. That's a drop in the bucket compared to hundreds to thousands of players at a time (a few of those even like topic starter) who will actually earn profits from this wasted endeavor.

What also is the issue is the sudden-non-participation of those involved in order to profit from their co-conspirators. Say if the target was to raise prices by 2000cr, what stops anyone in the know to start raking in at the 1000cr point? Those people who wish to double-cross are those who end up profiting the most from this whole thing because not only do they know the hidden trend, they'll continue to ride the rising wave until they see most of the other participants take note.
.

Thirst - cont'd
2.) Second, is to ride speculation. If you do enough of the first plan, it's likely that more powerful economic entities, or even the common speculator, will participate in the buy out just to get a piece of the pie - raising prices long after you have ceased attempting to corner the market.
The game has openly stated three rings will not intervene no matter what happens. Making the attempts that much more powerful.

This isn't manipulating the market. At all.
.

Thirst - cont'd
3.) Most malicious of all, is to have contacts with 000 rings to have a secret schedule of Power Surge weekends.

The people who can do this are likely have better and more efficient ways of getting whatever they want from the game if they have access to information like that.

Never have I claimed that cornering the market was a viable course of action, in fact, I've quite clearly stated it was ridiculous. I thought it a simple example to illustrate the point that there are ways to control a market. A simple example seemed fitting for someone with a ridiculous claim that the market may not be manipulated.

Just a few things, since you enjoy picking on things that don't matter, while being vague about things that do.
1.) Not everyone contributing to the rise in prices is in the know about cornering the market.
2.) We have a fanatical user-base that's ready to jump the gun and exaggerate skyrocketing prices
3.) Unlike the real world, there is neither central bank, or hell any other bank, that tracks prices, and will strive to stabilize once the attempt has been uncovered. The feeling that "prices are rising I must act" will be extremely personal, and will in no way be organized
4.) It might work on the assumption that: a vast majority of energy purchasers are free players that only have access to energy because of crown exchange. Since energy is essential and can not be ignored for such things as crafting. These players WILL pay double. Assume that most of the player-base consists of such players. Know that energy purchasers will not, out of their own pockets, strive to drive prices down. All that will happen is a rift is created between free and paying characters. With paying characters riding on with the profit.
5.) Even after all this. I would not advise such a large undertaking.

You claim that manipulating perceptions and speculations isn't manipulating the market. At all. I'd like to hear your definition. Because allow me to let you in a secret:

The amount of crowns and the amount of money in the system doesn't matter.
The only thing that matters is how people perceive the situation is. It's perception that decides prices and not reality.
When you manipulate how people perceive where the market is going. Then in turn, you manipulate the market. If people perceive that prices will go up, even if it previously had no basis in reality, people will buy -now- before it goes up. And all this buying will -cause- prices to go up. A self-fulfilling prophecy comes into effect.

Spiking prices
Spreading rumors
The Test Forum
Crazy Naysayers

All things that manipulate the perception of where the market is heading, may potentially be used to control the market. I'm afraid your definition of controlling the market, whatever it is, is far too narrow.
-=-=-=-=-

"The people who can do this are likely have better and more efficient ways of getting whatever they want from the game if they have access to information like that."

How so. I'm quite curious - you speak in vague generalizations after all. An electronic transaction, from say: a generous gm, is traceable. This information, assuming that such schedules aren't held in secrecy, may be spread and nobody would ever know.

It's you that needs to re-read.

"2.) Second, is to ride speculation. If you do enough of the first plan, it's likely that more powerful economic entities, or even the common speculator, will participate in the buy out just to get a piece of the pie - raising prices long after you have ceased attempting to corner the market."

If you do enough of the first plan....
If you spike prices enough...

You ride the change in perception you have caused. :/
To control perception is to control the market- Do you agree?
It is possible to control percetion - Do you agree?
If you agree to both, then it follows that you can control the market.

"It's not profitable"
"Nothing happened"
Things you do not see, do not exist?
Instead of laying down the law so to speak, why don't you try to argue why. Because quite frankly, you're full of air.

"people have tried and failed"

It all comes down to:
Do you claim to know how many people have tried, succeeded, and never bothered to post in the forums.
You never know, it might be happening everyday.
Because you can only see what is in front of you.

All in all, I'm done with convincing because honestly, you just have to personally see attempts fail personally. Either through several topics where people have tried, or even seeing the failure firsthand.

I myself with 50k ce have done an attempt before. The result? An temporary decrease of CE prices by 500cr (I was one of the naive ones trying to lower the prices of CE), lasting a good 5 hours. Ended up with a loss of around 3kce after all was said and done.

And my other "vague and general" claim about those who won't participate and take advantage of rallies? See the very first post of this topic. Now realize that not only could dozens put those type of posts, but by the hundreds of requests for each person. For every 100k CE a group or movement could have, there are at least 10 times more people with similar if not larger CE pools. And this number is not an exaggeration if you ever saw random screeenshots of vets with their CE/crown count, or frequent the Bazaar with the high-dealings for mere costumes.

I myself always sit on a (relatively meager to many) pool of 30-50k ce at a time ready to either spend on some fancy pricy item that actually interests me enough, random things to do in the game, or to take advantage of possible rides of speculation. And I am not alone.

And the biggest reason why you're wrong: people have tried and failed. This isn't a secret, and if you weren't so stubborn about your ignorance about the conversations that have happened dozens of times on these forums (as you are more showing how new you are to these forums at least), you would've accepted it by now.

No one is going to come to the forums and say "I changed the market and made 5000+ CE from all of you", and say how... unless they were quitting Spiral Knights.

Those people posting about those things on the forums were shooting themselves in the foot. Most players reading them, who aren't participating, will look at it and think "I can buy CE cheaper soon!" and work against you buying up yours. Or worse... selling their CE ahead of time knowing it will drop, and coming ahead with a truckload of your crystal energy. The demand from these players will drive the crown price back to "normal" & undo any work the people tried to do.

OP is making CE cheaper, right?

If so, why are people whining about it?