A Market Manipulation Discussion

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 5/16/2021 at 12:00 PM, Ukase said:

So, currently, I see "something" that I consider manipulation. Uncommon Salvage. 
 

 

Also, I've found that it's a lot easier to take markets where they want to go rather than make them go where I want them to.  I've probably got 10-20k of yellow and orange salvage in storage on various characters.  I almost never pay buy-it-nao prices for salvage, but I do not abide with putting in bids that don't get filled by the end of my session.  So if they haven't, I'll throw a few hundred/thousand into the market, lay down some buy-back bids, and move on.  Maybe I make a profit, maybe not.  But I cannot stand putting in a block of 50-200 bids on rare salvage and not getting filled relatively soon.

[Andreah]

I did try to create a price floor on rare salvage once.

 

Someone was saying in general chat that they had posted the first piece of rare salvage they got as a drop, all excited and hoping for the 500k windfall to pay for their enhancements, and then got stuck with a 10k sell. Chat helped explain how the market works and how posting at 1 usually is fine, but can have some bumps like that, and I think someone emails the person a little cash to help them get started -- our community is great like that.

 

And then I put in a bunch of bids at some low number I thought would at least make sure anyone posting at 1 got some not unreasonable amount for it ... 250k, I think? Maybe 350? I don't remember the details. The problem was the volume was too high for me to keep up with (I supposed I could have but it was a pain and not worth the time), since I was only buffering the inventory in my character salvage inventory space.

 

I quit doing that after a week or so, but I started recommending to my friends and SG's to flip rare salvage on the lower end. It's a good beginner marketeer's market.

[Yomo Kimyata]

4 hours ago, Andreah said:

I quit doing that after a week or so, but I started recommending to my friends and SG's to flip rare salvage on the lower end. It's a good beginner marketeer's market.

I have to disagree with you here.  The rare salvage market isn’t a good place to learn marketing.  Thanks to fungibility it’s a real liquid market with good real supply and demand, but in my opinion it’s not lucrative enough.  Buying at 380 and selling at 420 is a net loser, and that’s no way to learn.  You can make inf on it, sure, but there are so many easier ways to get your feet wet.  IMO 

[Spaghetti Betty]

Don't know if it counts as manipulation, but I get pretty offended when I see common salvage going for more than 500 inf a piece, so I'll dump 200-300 pieces at 100 inf to balance it back out.

[Andreah]

19 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I have to disagree with you here.  The rare salvage market isn’t a good place to learn marketing.  Thanks to fungibility it’s a real liquid market with good real supply and demand, but in my opinion it’s not lucrative enough.  Buying at 380 and selling at 420 is a net loser, and that’s no way to learn.  You can make inf on it, sure, but there are so many easier ways to get your feet wet.  IMO 

I'll disagree back. 🙂 A good starter market should be a bit more work and less lucrative - that's the incentive to move on once you've learned from it. On the other hand, it can make a 20% profit per trade, on less then a million starting inf; and not by buying at 380 and selling at 420, no. I recommend new people bid pretty low, and let those bids sit overnights. They learn that even a market with a lot of volume can swing pretty far in a day. Then they learn how to set sell prices to get a fair profit after fees, and then to balance their buy and sell prices to prevent building up unsold inventory.

 

They do this for a few days or maybe a week or three, and then they've outgrown it, have a stash of inf to play with, and want to move up. In the mean time, a better floor's been set on the rare salvage market than would have been present otherwise.

 

 

[Glacier Peak]

Come on folks, let's get the grimy details! I wanna see candy stealing tactics from babies! 

[Yomo Kimyata]

5 hours ago, Andreah said:

I'll disagree back. 🙂 A good starter market should be a bit more work and less lucrative - that's the incentive to move on once you've learned from it. On the other hand, it can make a 20% profit per trade, on less then a million starting inf; and not by buying at 380 and selling at 420, no. I recommend new people bid pretty low, and let those bids sit overnights. They learn that even a market with a lot of volume can swing pretty far in a day. Then they learn how to set sell prices to get a fair profit after fees, and then to balance their buy and sell prices to prevent building up unsold inventory.

 

They do this for a few days or maybe a week or three, and then they've outgrown it, have a stash of inf to play with, and want to move up. In the mean time, a better floor's been set on the rare salvage market than would have been present otherwise.

 

 

 

In order to make a 20% profit per trade, you need to buy at 375k and sell at 500k (for example).  You're not buying at 375k.  You talked about putting in floors.  I know where the floors are in rare salvage, and I know that barring a major sell fest, your friends aren't going to be buying at 375k.  Now selling at 500k?  It happens every day, but the only way you are going to get that sale is if you are offering something well below 400k. And then you take the chance that someone like me decides to pay 405k for a thousand or two.  There's no way you (or me) is going to get off a 20% profit on 1,000 units in a day.  

 

No, it's not a good beginner's market.  You can probably make a lot more inf on the yellow salvage market.  Either bidding below vendor value or even bidding above and selling a few hundred units in an hour.  That's a good way to learn about layered caps and floors, imo.

[Andreah]

20 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

You're not buying at 375k.  You talked about putting in floors.  I know where the floors are in rare salvage, and I know that barring a major sell fest, your friends aren't going to be buying at 375k.

Maybe it's moved since I last checked -- it's been a few weeks since I've dabbled in it. But I was routinely buying at below 350k, and selling at 450k or more. Not huge amounts, but enough that it would be worthwhile for a starter.

Edited May 20, 2021 by Andreah

[Ukase]

Opinions are going to vary. I would never advise anyone I know to even mess with salvage, other than just buying what you need before you need it so you can bid more cheaply and just wait for it to fill. 

For my starter guys, they kill a few mobs before I get 2xp buff, then I'll skim through the AH for rare recipes being sold on the cheap. And buy as many as I can for as cheap as I can. I'll use inner inspiration, sell those, maybe buy some small insp for 15 to 25 inf, then vendor them for 50. Like Razzle Dazzles. They're rare, and go up to level 30, if I recall, so I know if I buy them for 1k each, I can sell them for 6k at the store. I buy a ton of those. I don't know why people other than badgers ever sell an uncommon or rare recipe, but I'm not complaining. 

The only reason I can think of to buy salvage in large quantities is to sell it for badges. Take a loss, get rid of that junk. But, hey, you do you. I think a great starting path is the explorations at level 4 in Atlas, Echo:Atlas, Echo: Galaxy for 45 converters (5 merits x 3, x 3 converters per merit) Sell half of them at 65k or whatever the going rate is. Keep the rest for when you have a few hundred thousand and can either buy a cheap IO to convert (perplex, Air Burst, Multi-Strike, that kind of trash) for 250-300k, then convert to something worth 2x or 4x, depending on the rng. 
You guys already know this stuff. But I'm a bit disappointed you'd direct folks to a salvage play. There's chump change, but that's about it. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 5/20/2021 at 11:01 AM, Glacier Peak said:

Come on folks, let's get the grimy details! I wanna see candy stealing tactics from babies! 

 

This may not be what you're looking for, but I end up selling to myself a lot (one alt to another alt on the same account).  Mostly this is in order to change the level on an IO (or even to make the attuned/nonattuned swap).  Sometimes it is for nefarious purposes, but not very often.

[Glacier Peak]

2 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

This may not be what you're looking for, but I end up selling to myself a lot (one alt to another alt on the same account).  Mostly this is in order to change the level on an IO (or even to make the attuned/nonattuned swap).  Sometimes it is for nefarious purposes, but not very often.

🦧

[Yomo Kimyata]

25 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

🦧

 

Example:  say I have a bunch (let's call it 50) of lvl 31 Impervium Armors of various types lying around from a rare roulette bender.  I could sell them all as is, but I'd just be feeding a bottom feeder (who again is probably me).  I could convert them all in set to get +psionic resist, but that's a lot of work and it's not a deep market -- it would take me longer than I like to sell them all.  I could convert them all by resist damage, but at that level, there's just a little too much garbage.  So I figure out a good mid-market price and list them all at that price.  Call it 2mm.

 

Now I get on another character and bid on level 20 Impervium Armors at 2mm.  Now I can convert by resist damage and get a more favorable chance of getting the good sets (Steadfast, Unbreakable Guard) and don't have to worry about some more questionable choices.  I can easily sell 50 of either of those in a day.  It's really just a method of saving converters at the cost of paying 10% to J. G. Wentworth, but it definitely adds up over time.

[America's Angel]

If you had enough influence you could probably control the Hamidon Origin market.

[Black_Assassin]

29 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

If you had enough influence you could probably control the Hamidon Origin market.

 

how much is "enough" and what would the controlling look like?

[Yomo Kimyata]

2 hours ago, America's Angel said:

If you had enough influence you could probably control the Hamidon Origin market.

 

Yup.  The trick would be managing it well enough that you make a good profit and periodically clean out middlers.

[EmperorSteele]

Would Hami-Os be worth controlling? The big ones don't seem to move fast enough, and the low-end ones go for the same price as rare salvage. Plus, Hami raids happen every night, and one can get them from running the MLTF and LRSF as well (well Synthetics but they're bucketed with the normals). So it's not like these things are all that rare or hard to come by.

 

One could certainly turn a profit running these back to back, taking the (S)HO reward and selling it, but I feel like the (legit) demand would dry up pretty quick if someone did this every night. But maybe that's just me.

[Yomo Kimyata]

2 hours ago, EmperorSteele said:

Would Hami-Os be worth controlling?

 

Worth playing around in?  Absolutely, but controlling?  Probably not.  (I consider "controlling" to be buying and selling 90%+ of all volume for an extended period of time).

 

Out of 11 HOs, there are roughly 4 that can be consistently sold for 10mm+.  It seems to me that the clear economic choice is to take the merits rather than roll the dice on getting a Cyto v. a Perox.  So yeah, supply is in theory unlimited, but in reality less so.  That said, you can make a decent living in the HO space.

[Ukase]

21 hours ago, EmperorSteele said:

Would Hami-Os be worth controlling? The big ones don't seem to move fast enough, and the low-end ones go for the same price as rare salvage. Plus, Hami raids happen every night, and one can get them from running the MLTF and LRSF as well (well Synthetics but they're bucketed with the normals). So it's not like these things are all that rare or hard to come by.

 

One could certainly turn a profit running these back to back, taking the (S)HO reward and selling it, but I feel like the (legit) demand would dry up pretty quick if someone did this every night. But maybe that's just me.

Don't forget about the Titan-Os and the Hydra-Os. They come at a lower level, even when you're 50, but the Titan-Os only take 4-5 minutes to get on speeden run. (speed eden) 
I had the level 50 cyto in my base already; combined 4 times with the Titan-O version...and I've got a 53 cyto - which for some silly reason has historically sold for 300M. Personally, I wouldn't pay more than 5m, but that's just me being cheap. But if they want to spend even 100M on one, I'll sell them all day, if I can get them quickly enough. 

A number of folks aren't aware you can combine a level 48 titan-O with a level 50 Hami-O, and get a level 51 hami-O. Same with the hydra-os. 

[Crysis]

Which one of you is messing with the Rare salvage market?  I had a whole bunch of Brianstorm salvage and generally I just burn it to make rare salvage for crafting purposes.  But I noted yesterday well into last night that there are literally dozens of rare salvage items going for 1MM a pop...some higher.  Given how many are for sale, looks like a flood event.

[Troyusrex]

21 minutes ago, Crysis said:

  But I noted yesterday well into last night that there are literally dozens of rare salvage items going for 1MM a pop...some higher.  Given how many are for sale, looks like a flood event.

I saw that too, but I decided that someone had put in a large number of bids for 1 million not realizing ( or not caring) they could get it for half that much.

[Sakai]

On 5/25/2021 at 5:31 AM, Ukase said:

A number of folks aren't aware you can combine a level 48 titan-O with a level 50 Hami-O, and get a level 51 hami-O. Same with the hydra-os. 

I had no idea. 

[tidge]

Other than through confession, I don't know how to assess if a single person is trying to manipulate the AH. The closest we've seen to consensus that the market was being manipulated was (as written above) the spike in uncommon salvage prices. My personal opinion is that the uncommon salvage price jump was market manipulation, but it had to be for the lulz and not for profit.

 

Earlier in the life of HC I definitely felt that I was the only player filling one-or-two specific markets (the supply always looked like it was my entries, the sale prices aligned with my collections), and a small fortune was made until other folks noticed the niche (probably because they had built a character that could slot those pieces) and drove down my profits.

 

The Hami-O market is interesting, but I can't imagine it being worth trying to manipulate. HOs aren't fungible like other enhancements. The (current) game mechanics and slotting behavior don't really support the value of HOs except for a small number of choices that typically only benefit a limited number of powers (for which the player doesn't want to invest slots). The one area I think could be open to manipulation would be buying up 50, 51, 52 (and the Titan-Os) and marketing only 53s. But at that point I think the seller would only be hoping to hook a few big fish while ignoring all the small ones. I played in the Membrane (Recharge/Defense/ToHit) market for a while only because some folks (and MIDS) was giving bad advice about slotting them for perma Link Minds / Mind Link. I didn't make tons of inf, and in my defense I have always been vocal that the Membranes don't contribute to the recharge of those powers (despite what MIDS would tell you).

 

If Hami-O's could be converted, I think we'd see a lot more of them on the market as well as attempts at market manipulation of them.

 

Sidebar: I would expect (based on the passionate discussions regarding certain build philosophies, specifically "Proc Monsters") to see more demand for certain HOs, but as a practical matter I've never paid particularly high prices for the ones that end up in my builds.

[Yomo Kimyata]

3 hours ago, Sakai said:

I had no idea. 

I hadn’t either, and I’m grateful to @Ukase for not only teaching me something new, but something I could make a few inf of off.

[Yomo Kimyata]

3 hours ago, tidge said:

Other than through confession, I don't know how to assess if a single person is trying to manipulate the AH. The closest we've seen to consensus that the market was being manipulated was (as written above) the spike in uncommon salvage prices. My personal opinion is that the uncommon salvage price jump was market manipulation, but it had to be for the lulz and not for profit.

I think of manipulation as trying to create intermediate to long term price changes by affecting/controlling (or *appearing to*) supply and/or demand.  It’s easy to spike prices on rare to 1mm.  Just put in 5 different bids at 1mm, the Last 5 turns all to 1,000,000 and General fills up w/ “OMG RARES ARE WORTH 1mm!”

 

Now, you could pretty easily put in bids at, say, 900k for a block of 1,000.  Or 10,000.  That would keep anyone from buying at under 900k until all your bids fill.  You’re not going to make money on this, but you will certainly be manipulating the market until your bids fill.  I’d guess it would take about 5 minutes to fill 1,000 rares there.  That’s purely processing time.  I’m not sure how long it would take to fill 10,000.  It depends on how much is actually being offered by players under the 1mm seeding.

[Murcielago]

My Hami-O market manipulation isn't working nearly as well as I hoped. I've gotten the last five from 25k INF to 500k INF so I think I need more time before I can get each enhancement to a sustainable 1M INF.