Inf Supply: Idle Speculation

Yes, but spare money in the system clearly haunts the long corridors of your mind and whispers dark secrets in your dreams that evaporate from memory when you wake.

There I was. Trapped. Outflanked. Outnumbered a trillion to one.

If solo, try to corner pull it.

Well isn't this satisfying.

Quote:

Originally Posted by UberGuy There is a difference in the assertion that "there are people who manipulate the market" and the assertion that "nearly everyone who uses the market casually is the victim of manipulation most of the time". The latter is the form of the claim that so many market doomsayers make, and that's the kind of claim which ensures that I don't think much of the poster's knowledge of the market.

To paraphrase "Sure lots of people are continuously manipulating the market, but it's unlikely they actually affect most people"

This of course comes from someone who held the position that overlapping price ranges weren't close. Shocker.

Quote:

Based on my own observations of the market across a large number of items generally (obtained primarily because I tend to be a net seller of goods), I find the price fluctuations of most goods at any given time to lack the fingerprints of manipulation over the longer term. Because of that, I don't accept that most goods are being manipulated most of the time.

bonus for me I get to have predicted this earlier in the thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Another_Fan AF: There are people doing X, here are examples Market Forum: No you are wrong I and people I know are not doing X so it is not happening. The lesson here: If you want to prove something is happening you just need examples. If you want to prove something isn't happening you need to rule it out completely.

Its also a nice a variant of rule 2.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Another_Fan 2. If someone is complainins about manipulation assert that it never happens then go to 1

In this case it's, "It happens but just not to you, don't complain because if you do you are a jerk, and ignorant"

I'm not replying to A_F because I have him on ignore. Sometimes, in threads where I figure he's not likely to be ... acting like why I have him on ignore, I look at his posts and sometimes respond to them, and if I choose wisely on when to do this, it doesn't turn into an argument.

I know this isn't one of those situations, so I'm not looking. But since he's been quoted some...

I'm speaking in "vague" terms because I'm giving anecdotal evidence based on years of using the market as both a buyer and a seller, but primarily as a seller. I'm a seller who sells many different things, because I play a lot, and I therefore produce a lot of different things. I'm kind of a farmer, except I just happen to enjoy high difficulty settings at 50, and getting lots of random drops is a happy side effect, rather than being the point. And I've been playing like that since, oh, around Issue 9. (Obviously I got better access to "higher difficulty" in I16, but even before then I would pad with my own accounts.)

Looking at the prices of lots of different things lots of the time gives you a decent sense of what's going on. Manipulation often causes abrupt changes in price, bid and sale behavior that are noticeable.

I didn't keep logs. I can't prove to anyone what I'm claiming. I'm saying it's what I've seen, and it's why I don't accept claims that price manipulation is both systemic and pervasive. It happens. I notice it happen. It is often happening to something somewhere on the market. Everyone is not buying that something right then. Most cases I've noticed do not appear to last more than a few days. By definition, that means that patience wins out over it, and that epic levels of patience are not required.

It happens, but it sure doesn't look like a serious issue for buyers from where I sit, unless they insist on using the market as a store.

Edit: And yes, I do not consider flipping to be "market manipulation". I define that as attempting to control supply and/or price. Flippers try to do neither. They simply try to find something where there is a lot of pre-existing price volatility and profit off it. They tend to collapse that volatility by doing so unless they are very conservative. Trying to buy up all the supply of something and sell it at a high price is not what most posters here call "flipping".

as a grizzled veteran of many a flipping thread over the years I'll make another stab at clarifying this to the point where even myopic, blinkered players with severe cataracts can figure it out:

Flippers are, as Uber notes, profiting off pre-existing volatility.

They buy junk at the low end (underpriced stuff) & recirculate it.
To ensure the brisk turnover necessary to keep the machine humming happily along, they re-list at a price point well behind the high end (overpriced stuff).


They raise the price floor and lower the price ceiling while increasing the supply of whatever they're working with- I think it's safe to assume all that underpriced stuff would otherwise vanish off the market. I've always said this is a social good, but even the most jaundiced observer would be hard pressed to say it was a negative.

Whatever financial harm we presume is being inflicted on bargain hunters at the low end is more than compensated for by dampening price escalation and spiking at the high end.

a 'last 5' that looks like this would be catnip to a flipper:

5000
60,000
4000
60,000
80,000


they'd likely drop a few stacks of bids at 6-8k and re-list somewhere around 20-30k. It wouldn't be surprising to check back a while later and see the last 5 looking like this:

10,000
45,000
40,000
55,000
10,000


As the Luck Charmers demonstrated you can drive flippers out of a niche by consciously narrowing the price point, buying above & selling below their limits until you end up with an item selling for more or less exactly what it's "worth".


Anyway, flippers don't manipulate anything- they're just along for the ride.

Now these are the types of A_F posts I am more familiar with. Good points. Good arguments supporting said points.

IMO flipping is just another form of manipulation. As A_F noted you are just driving up the price. I fail to see how that can drive down the price if managed decently ? Sure I can see prices rebounding down from your artificially set point, but thats only if you lessen the pressure you apply. And in some cases if pressure is applied long enough the new higher price becomes the "used or accepted" price by most who will come to deal in an item. Flipping is a powerful tool in price manipulation IMO. Manipulation isnt just flipping, but flipping is a big part of it. Maybe thats where so many are butting heads ?

Now I can understand why some might say that manipulation isnt that viable, but ONLY IF you are looking at high volume and / or volatility items. Personally I made my fortunes simply working on the high priced items without excessive supply. Turning a 20 million item into a 80 to 100 million item, turning 300 million items into 600 million items, 1 billion items into 1.5 to 2 billion items. And of course various price points in between. Those were the real mega money makers, and easily susceptible to manipulation. The only limiting factor to success was starting influence to work with, and how much you were willing to commit.

For a long time I cut my teeth on 5 to 10 million range items and was able to profit quite nicely. But once I had enough financial muscle to start working my way up bigger ticket items my wealth went astronomical.

Trying to control items where you had to deal in hundreds or thousands of an item is just too much work IMO, and not worth the profit earned. But thats just me. I was after the bigger hits and I generally succeeded.

The biggest reason I am consistently shocked by the seemingly intensely strong sentiment that "market manipulation isnt truly possible or effective" ... is simply that I became obscenely wealthy doing what some of these posters say "doesnt really work". When it does. This is a game with a "closed" system. So many of the real world factors that many say exist and therefore will hinder or prevent manipulation, are not present here. The madness is simpler.