Rising Gold Prices

vampirenite wrote: »

Don't you know there are many people making tons of coin by playing the market b:laugh.

The economy is small enough that someone with enough coin and gold can manipulate the prices up and down to a degree. The buy Gold when the price is low then sell it when it is high. They buy up all the straggler small bids in between to drive the prices up or down.

Heh. You can manipulate the market both ways, both to increase or to lower the price of gold. I was doing this during the JJ event, but I was doing it to lower the price of gold. If I saw a bunch of small (1-4 gold) high-priced bids at the top of the buy list, I bought them out so the top bid was much lower. Then I'd place my (largish) buy bid for gold at the lower price.

And when buying gold outright (not placing bids), I'd leave some of the lower priced gold sell orders to encourage new sellers to underprice them.

IMHO it's not profitable enough to make money this way. The exchange fee eats 4.04% for each round-trip transaction (coin->gold->coin). So if you bought gold at 180k, you'd have to sell it at 187.27k just to break even. That's pretty close to the maximum day-to-day fluctuation I saw during the event. And even when it exceeded that, you'd be making a measly 1%-3%.

You are much better off just using the gold to buy stuff from the cash shop, and cat shopping it. Most cat shops I see mark those items up 10%-20%. Easily more than you'd make by manipulating the gold market. And if there's a sale, you can easily make 30%-50%. By my calculations, the JJ event was like a 35%-60% markup.

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

IMHO it's not profitable enough to make money this way. The exchange fee eats 4.04% for each round-trip transaction (coin->gold->coin). So if you bought gold at 180k, you'd have to sell it at 187.27k just to break even. That's pretty close to the maximum day-to-day fluctuation I saw during the event. And even when it exceeded that, you'd be making a measly 1%-3%.

On HT due to the large population the market is larger and harder to manipulate. On the PvP and the newer servers the smaller population and coin/Gold in circulation makes the fluctuation and the B/S spreads larger, especially during events and during the times that most people are asleep.

If you time the spread to net at least 10K per Gold and you are playing with a Bank Balance of say 100G you could clear 1 mil a day quite easily.

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

If gold is priced at 200k like it is on most of the newer servers, and you have 100G, that's equivalent to 20 mil. Making 1 mil is only a 5% margin. Like I said, I regularly see cat shops marking stuff up from the cash shop by 10%-20%. i.e. With your 100G you could make 2-4 mil. It's more money and a lot less risky.

I do not believe it is less risky because you are assuming that the exchange rate is stable and prices are stable and not subject to random sales by PWI.

Your 10-20% markup in the cash shop is based on a specific exchange rate which could easily switch to a 10-20% markDOWN if exchange rates move the wrong way. In fact I have taken advantage of this many times when an overnight catshopper doesn't adjust their price when the exchange rate spikes. The other thing is that if you mark up too much it takes a long time to sell anything in a catshop.

On the other hand if you are playing the exchange rate market you tend to be more aware of what the current exchange rate is and are helping it move in the direction you want. But I would add that to make the most money you probably want to do both Catshopping and playing with the exchange rate.

One more thing coin and Gold are 100% liquid. And as they say Cash is King.

vampirenite wrote: »

I do not believe it is less risky because you are assuming that the exchange rate is stable and prices are stable and not subject to random sales by PWI.

Your 10-20% markup in the cash shop is based on a specific exchange rate which could easily switch to a 10-20% markDOWN if exchange rates move the wrong way. In fact I have taken advantage of this many times when an overnight catshopper doesn't adjust their price when the exchange rate spikes.

That only matters if you use gold as your reference (i.e. you bought gold with $$). If you use coin as your reference, you buy gold with coin at a certain price, then you buy the items from CS, and simply mark them up so you'll end up with 10%-20% more coin than you spent on the gold. If the exchange rate fluctuates up, you're still guaranteed 10%-20% more than you started with. If someone buys you out like you did, all that's happened is you lost an opportunity to make more than 20%.

If the exchange rate fluctuates down, then you could get screwed having to sell at a loss to recover your coin. But the big drops are fairly predictable and easy to avoid - the price of gold goes down when sales end and demand for gold drops. The smaller drops generally mean instead of making 10%-20%, you make 7%-15%. If you're smart, then you're selling sale items, so when the sale ends they'll actually go up in value. That's why cat shopping is more stable - you can set it up so it's virtually impossible to lose money.

We could argue this in circles, with you coming up with scenarios to counter anything I say. Let me put it this way - I've tried it both ways. Cat shopping CS items is much more profitable and stable.

well, some generous person has bought all the high priced gold and the highest buy price is somewhere around 150k, and i assume it was a GM. Thank you for fixing the outrageous gold prices. I appreciate it.

Kardie - Dreamweaver wrote: »

well, some generous person has bought all the high priced gold and the highest buy price is somewhere around 150k, and i assume it was a GM. Thank you for fixing the outrageous gold prices. I appreciate it.

It's back to 200k. If people can sell their gold for 200k+ quickly, then they're just going to put more in at that price so the price won't dip for long.

Any long term solutions to this problem won't be seen immediately. Just got to give it time.

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary wrote: »

Why assume the market is controlled by gestures of good-will? It's controlled by supply and demand. Believing in hypothetical rich players who go around deciding what Gold prices should be is like believing in magic fairies who you hope will fix your car, rather than taking it to a mechanic.

Whats wrong with believing in fairy mechanics?

Theres so much you aint seen tsk tsk.

That varies by the supply of the chests and what they're being sold for.

If chests are catshoped at 300k, gold can't go for more than 137k.

As the surplus of chests decreases over time (which it will with sales over and less demand for gold), your scenario becomes less and less likely to happen as well. Those chests set a max price on gold, not a minimum.

Gasoline - Lost City wrote: »

I don't think you realize how easy 9X gets chests. I get around 3-5 per day often from cube and rebirth. If i can get golds for less than 200k each i will make a profit from them. And that goes for every 9x on the server and every person that do cube. As soon as they find gold below 200k they buy iron hammer and open chest and make money. Its really impossible for gold prices to drop when ppl get so many chest everyday, and 5 golds = 1 mil from chest.

How much are BUY orders for gold in your server? (not being sarcastic, I do not have an account on your server to look it up myself)

It went back down to what it was before.

It used to be at like what 120k on Lost City. It went up to around 160k and then they implemented Jolly Jones. They said it was to lower gold prices. After Jolly Jones gold goes around 160k on lost city.


It only went back to pre-jolly jones levels. It didn't really lower.

Telarith - Sanctuary wrote: »

To all the posters who called Xarafox a liar, or believed they were capable of an opinion that was worth a dang when saying gold would stay at 200k range: You are all idiots. Thank you.

Did Xarfox grow bewbs? Or did u make his name sound kinda feminine.

The gold prices are now declining (albeit at a slow and unsteady rate). Let's wait until they settle and then we'll judge if Xarfox was right, ya?

Sadpuma - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Bump, bc Xar's post is just hilarious right now.....

Yeah very interesting find, i dont understand how pumping 10mil notes and end game gear into the game is part of the "great plan". I do understand they want to sell things, but imagne a lvl 19 player being able to have gear that a lvl 100 has to farm at 0.005 percent drop rate(percent might be a bit off,TT100 scarlet mat) and gold prices have sky rocketed across 500k, I am sure they r monitoring it nicely but they shud realize that a lvl 50-60 players cant afford even angels at that prices leave alone charms.

Sadpuma - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Bump, bc Xar's post is just hilarious right now.....

+1

/10char

lol... pots are cheaper by a long shot now. i wonder if i'll see charmless tws