*looking for thread report button...*

In general, I suspect that playing the daily & weekend fluctuations will prove more profitable than arbitrage, in the larger scale.

Good arbitrage is a recipe to gain 10-150 crowns per transaction. If you're unlucky, you get stuck on 'the wrong side' of the equation (holding crowns where you need CE, or the reverse) when the market deflates or inflates on a daily or weekly cycle.

...Not that I *know* the flow of those cycles; that's just a best guess based on my limited observations.

Reporting for the POINTLESSNESS of it all

I would be so much more enthusiastic about this game if economy played a role of actual gameplay. What I mean is having a live feed system similar to the stock exchange marketing. Things like showing the value of CE, CR, specific weapons and mats on some kind of ticker ingame. It sounds farfetched, but I think it would be fun.

>but they might not be happy to know that others are making money just from how impatient they are.

if they were, no one would be insta trading...

This playing the market thing actually closes the gap between buying and selling price slightly, by creating slightly closer to each other offers, benefitting insta purchasers.

@Tysta:
Because he's effectively lowering CE prices be removing crowns from the system and lowering the gap between buying and selling price?
I just dont see the logic

Do explain how.

And if your explanation start with, "It drives prices up", then walk through it again, and note the following:

1) When someone buys CE with crowns, they tend to buy it one small bit at a time.
2) When someone sells CE for crowns, they often unload a lot at once.
3) Thus, it's okay when doing this to be second-best on your offer with crowns to buy CE, but the competition is tougher on selling CE - because it goes slower.
4) This means that the competition, where it pushes, pushes the cost of CE, in crowns, downward.

When you go to buy CE with crowns, it's a tiny bit cheaper because of the way this contest is rigged. And the insta-buy is a lot closer to fair because people doing this are all undercutting each other, all the time, to offer you better deals.

If that actually ruins your fun, do tell me how.

If it's just "you're doing something complicated with money, and therefore you are the devil", then never mind. I can't reason you out of a position you didn't reason yourself into in the first place.

EDIT: For clarity. Some of that was confusingly phrased.

I posted this in another thread, but I'll go into more detail here if you guys don't mind.

Firstly someone said: "Popularizing the idea might put more people into it, which can reduce that 40-crown gap to more like ten... And also maybe let a few new folks know that, hey, option 2 is often a good plan."

I want to point out that this is mostly false. Even if 100% of the people did arbitrage methods on CE, there is a 2% cut from crowns for every transaction...this 2% causes an almost required gap of at least 80 crowns (if the buy/sell midpoint is 4,000 crowns). If the market were to ever "enter" this gap, then it would sway (either the buy would drop, or the sell would raise) -- it is economic repulsion. You can see this in the real world stock market as well, there is a broker gap (very small, only about 0.5% on daytrading, or possibly even less, depending on volume) because it costs $X to do a transaction, so it's only profitable for a person to buy/sell across this $X gap. Even if it's not guaranteed money, it is the illusion of that profit money that causes the gap.

How it all works

Players with money will purchase CE from 3R. Those players will either sell their CE on the market, or use their CE to play for crowns. When CE is put on the market, it becomes supplied and the price falls (in a situation of no demand, this price could plummet to 0 crowns). Players with crowns who are in need of CE in order to play will purchase it from the market, which increases demand and the price raises (in a no supply situation and with enough time, this price could reach infinite).

Think of those 2 situations like a game of tetris (simplistic tetris using a 1x1 block and a 2 width screen). As people supply the market, a block is able to be moved into a spot (and if a line is made, it disappears). As the demand increases, that's similar to the level being pushed up and a block is randomly placed in 1 of the bottom 2 spots (leaving a gap). The "price" would be the level of the highest block on the screen, and if you watched for awhile, you'll notice the price fluctuate rapidly (an influx of supply would rapidly drop blocks and drive the price down dramatically, while no supply would raise up the level quickly).

If it weren't for arbitrage, not only would it be difficult for you to keep up with the price changes....but it would quickly rise without end (due to the freedom of crown earnings through ME while the demand is constantly increasing). Arbitrage hinders this rising by doing 3 things (in comparison to our analogy of tetris):

1. deflating the crowns in the game (through the 2% cut)
2. slowing down the rising level
3. spanning out the supply more evenly across time

This allows the price to settle into a much closer range that stiffens the rubberband effect. Over time, as people begin to get into the higher tiers, this price will eventually increase, but much more slowly as compared to if arbitrage was not allowed (if somehow purchasing CE from market turned into a middle-ground energy and couldn't be resold for example -- the price would be probably reaching 50kcr and nonstop increasing). At the moment, this gap seems to be from 3900-4100 crowns (when it reached close to these values, the volume sold in that position was way more than supply/demand could account for, these are economic roadblocks in a sense).

There's a lesson for you guys....oh, and by the way, I read we might be getting an auction house at some point. This will be a HUGE tipping point in the CE market, I forecast a rise in the rates (as people are able to efficiently sell their items, crowns will flow much faster, including into the hands of those who demand energy to get more items). This rise will probably happen near (or even before) the AH comes into action due to a lot of economists forecasting (they will hoarde the CE more, which raises the demand).

If any fellow economists would like to chat, in-game name is the same.

> Also, if they release new equipment with the same patch, suddenly people who had no use for crowns and hoarding CE may dump some CE back into the market.

True, my forecast was only half-shown....I was forecasting when/if the AH comes out, that CE is going to be hoarded which will raise the value. However, as items hit the AH, and the market finds the equilibrium for the items, people will put that CE back on the market, dropping the price. It's going to be one heck of a hump....it'll be ruthless, it'll be a madhouse, it'll be like working the pit in a stock exchange....it'll be glorious (for those who like that stuff)! I can't wait honestly.