If you actually want money, stahp it

[JPMorgan]

The badly done trading has been brought up before. Massive undercuts are annoying, but those aren't the only things that bring down the market. When you trade at large volumes you essentially create a price ceiling that will be perpetually undercut by any amount. Had Placentica here (not a jab at Placentica) traded at a smaller volume (the original trade was at 34,000 tons) the buys would have ate their way up the trades to a higher price before the new undercuts came and landed the price back to about where it was in the first place: $1,960.

(1) Trading at low volumes maintains higher prices.

(2) Not massively undercutting maintains higher prices.

(3) Trading at low volumes helps lessen the problem of massive undercuts.

 

Kind of had this joke a while, made this a few days ago:

Edited July 12, 2017 by JPMorgan

[Apeman]

I do agree with everything said except the part where putting large amounts causes undercutting. As a nation who usually throws up just 5k at a time, I constantly get undercut. I match allies for pricing. It comes down to how bad you want the cash. Throwing up 30k of a resource is a strategy being deployed, if you don't understand why then try expanding your mind as to probable reasons with some banana vodka.

[Charles Bolivar]

I've been doing this for years. Don't put anything up of more than a couple K besides food and don't undercut , match the lowest price instead.

Also, if the lowest offer is much lower than the 2nd lowest offer and is a tiny amount of resources, do everyone a favour and just buy the lowest offer and sell it at the same price as the second lowest offer instead. 

[Buorhann]

Maybe they're doing it intentionally.

[Azkar]

It's more annoying when they post a large volume that also massively undercuts the current going rate. 

[James II]

I'd rather starve the competition than make money.

As if we need it.

 

[Vladamir Putin]

Edited July 13, 2017 by Vladamir Putin

[seabasstion]

cool! more complaining about the market!

lets disregard the fact that 3 tons of oil can be used to make 6 tons of gasoline. yes lets blame the people that post large trade offers that are currently the 5th best price.

 

if youre so confident in your 3 steps to fix the economy then go ahead and buy out all of these people that are lowering the market and sell it in blocks of 100 maintaining that margin. if you are correct that placentica ruined the market then it stands to reason if you grow a spine and buy it out you would be in line for a massive windfall since they are (in)advertently deflating their value.

 

why make a post about it when you could make some cash money. it seems pretty 'retarded' to me to let this golden goose slip by

[JPMorgan]

3 hours ago, seabasstion said:

cool! more complaining about the market!

lets disregard the fact that 3 tons of oil can be used to make 6 tons of gasoline. yes lets blame the people that post large trade offers that are currently the 5th best price.

if youre so confident in your 3 steps to fix the economy then go ahead and buy out all of these people that are lowering the market and sell it in blocks of 100 maintaining that margin. if you are correct that placentica ruined the market then it stands to reason if you grow a spine and buy it out you would be in line for a massive windfall since they are (in)advertently deflating their value.

why make a post about it when you could make some cash money. it seems pretty 'retarded' to me to let this golden goose slip by

I don't think you see what I'm saying. Firstly, I was complaining about the "fifth trade" because I was watching the steel market intently and started watching it way before that trade was made and saw what was happening. You will always be undercut no matter what. Let's take this to the extremes to illustrate what I'm saying: If a trade was made for 1,000,000,000,000 tons of steel at $900ppu, the market will forever be at, or below (emphasis on below), $900ppu until all 1 trillion tons are sold because who would offer anything higher? However, no one else will be making that money but you, so you're still going to be undercut. It doesnt matter what you sell at, someone will be more desperate for money or just not care and undercut you. The demand for steel will not go away, so there will always be buys. If selling at a lower volume, the buys will come in faster than the number of sell offers being created -- inherently making the price climb.

Let's create a scenario and apply high and low volumes to it: 10 trades @ 5,000 tons each on some resource are listed, one of which is a new undercut by $5. Over some period 20,000 tons get bought and 2 new undercuts come in. What will happen?

Low volume trading:

High volume trading:

The two new undercuts yet put on in our hypothetical will be undercutting two distinct prices. To reiterate: If selling at a lower volume, the buys will come in faster than the number of sell offers being created -- inherently making the price climb. If I bought, I'd be helping the other sellers because now the lowest trade is gone (which would have happened faster if it was a lower volume), and I wouldn't be doing myself any favors unless I traded in a very specific way:

tl;dr

Putting it all together: If at all I was to sell any large amount of resources or buy those up and sell them at low volumes like you said, I should only do so over the course of several days waiting for each trade to be bought completely before putting up the next bit. If you want to help sellers, sell small, if you want to help the buyers, sell large.

Edited July 13, 2017 by JPMorgan

[seabasstion]

the price would only 'climb' because you are artificially reducing supply. this is basic econ 101. these markets are true as any other simple market out there where equilibrium is met where supply meets demand.

 

trying to collude with everyone to 'sell low volume' is a fools game. it's also incredibly one sided as offers like this on the buying side of steel establish a price floor that miraculously nobody ever seems to care about lol

 

if you want the money fast - sell it on the buy market. if you want to be patient and get a little extra cash - put a big fat offer on the market and wait. if you want to hustle and trade on volume - undercut by one and flip a lot of small trades.

 

what youre suggesting is for the people in scenario 2 to limit their supply to replicate scenario 3 without having the volume to support it. considering you have an open thread trying to recruit 'traders' for you i find this highly convenient.

 

just because i disagree with you doesn't mean i dont understand you. some people dont want to be bothered with babysitting their offers multiple times a day. the only difference between selling 1000 units 10 times a day and missing out on another 10 potential sales because of undercutting compared to selling 1000 units 10 times a day and missing out on another 10 potential sales because you dont have an offer out there is time on the user. if youre able to spend more time on the game, the needle moves toward the low volume high frequency dream scenario you describe. if they dont, the needle moves more towards the sit and collect model.

i was the biggest trader for a long time in this game. i did low volume high frequency trades for a long time. you would be amused how many messages i got that i was 'ruining' the market and that i should just put a large trade down and wait.

 

tl'dr: youre trying to buck the basic fundamental principal of a free market. good luck with that

[Azaghul]

39 minutes ago, seabasstion said:

the price would only 'climb' because you are artificially reducing supply. this is basic econ 101. these markets are true as any other simple market out there where equilibrium is met where supply meets demand.

 

trying to collude with everyone to 'sell low volume' is a fools game. it's also incredibly one sided as offers like this on the buying side of steel establish a price floor that miraculously nobody ever seems to care about lol

 

if you want the money fast - sell it on the buy market. if you want to be patient and get a little extra cash - put a big fat offer on the market and wait. if you want to hustle and trade on volume - undercut by one and flip a lot of small trades.

 

what youre suggesting is for the people in scenario 2 to limit their supply to replicate scenario 3 without having the volume to support it. considering you have an open thread trying to recruit 'traders' for you i find this highly convenient.

 

just because i disagree with you doesn't mean i dont understand you. some people dont want to be bothered with babysitting their offers multiple times a day. the only difference between selling 1000 units 10 times a day and missing out on another 10 potential sales because of undercutting compared to selling 1000 units 10 times a day and missing out on another 10 potential sales because you dont have an offer out there is time on the user. if youre able to spend more time on the game, the needle moves toward the low volume high frequency dream scenario you describe. if they dont, the needle moves more towards the sit and collect model.

i was the biggest trader for a long time in this game. i did low volume high frequency trades for a long time. you would be amused how many messages i got that i was 'ruining' the market and that i should just put a large trade down and wait.

 

tl'dr: youre trying to buck the basic fundamental principal of a free market. good luck with that

This. I've been both a high frequency and low frequency trader.  Sometimes you'll get someone come in and buy a massive amount that clears out a lot of small undercut trades and eats into the really big orders.  Sometimes people are buying or selling resources for their alliance on a large scale, tens of thousands at a time.  The big offers are really helpful for them.

Personally, my nation is big enough that spending a lot of RL time every day to make 1-2 million daily via high frequency trading doesn't feel worth it.  When my nation was much smaller it was.

[Dubayoo]

21 hours ago, seabasstion said:

the price would only 'climb' because you are artificially reducing supply. this is basic econ 101. these markets are true as any other simple market out there where equilibrium is met where supply meets demand.

 

trying to collude with everyone to 'sell low volume' is a fools game. it's also incredibly one sided as offers like this on the buying side of steel establish a price floor that miraculously nobody ever seems to care about lol

 

if you want the money fast - sell it on the buy market. if you want to be patient and get a little extra cash - put a big fat offer on the market and wait. if you want to hustle and trade on volume - undercut by one and flip a lot of small trades.

 

what youre suggesting is for the people in scenario 2 to limit their supply to replicate scenario 3 without having the volume to support it. considering you have an open thread trying to recruit 'traders' for you i find this highly convenient.

 

just because i disagree with you doesn't mean i dont understand you. some people dont want to be bothered with babysitting their offers multiple times a day. the only difference between selling 1000 units 10 times a day and missing out on another 10 potential sales because of undercutting compared to selling 1000 units 10 times a day and missing out on another 10 potential sales because you dont have an offer out there is time on the user. if youre able to spend more time on the game, the needle moves toward the low volume high frequency dream scenario you describe. if they dont, the needle moves more towards the sit and collect model.

i was the biggest trader for a long time in this game. i did low volume high frequency trades for a long time. you would be amused how many messages i got that i was 'ruining' the market and that i should just put a large trade down and wait.

 

tl'dr: youre trying to buck the basic fundamental principal of a free market. good luck with that

The babysitting comment doesn't make sense.  You're still better off creating multiple lower quantity trade offers at a gradual slope of prices than dumping it all at one price.  Whether you post them above, below, or around your desired price is a strategic assessment, but the technique should still be used.

If you're just dumping a block of resources down without gradually dividing it, that's just laziness.  Nobody's saying you should divide 50k into 100 gradations of 500 each per every $2, but at least divide it into the interval the going market seems to be working with.  If people are posting 1,000 unit regular blocks with $5 in between, then at least post 5,000 unit blocks with $25 in between. 

Edited July 14, 2017 by Dubayoo

[seabasstion]

please explain to me how 5k units priced at an average price of 2000 (in one lump sum) lowers the price of steel compared to 5k units priced at an average of 1950 based on your gradation

 

1000 @ 2000

1000 @ 1975

1000 @ 1950

1000 @  1925

1000 @ 1900

 

vs

 

5000 @ 2000

 

also: tell me how the undercutters that will come in after this 1900 price will help raise the price compared to undercutters at a 2000 price. the only reason the math worked in jp's example above was he cut the supply from 95k units to 50k units while keeping the demand (20k) units the same. like i said - he artificially reduced supply. thats not how this market works especially when you consider that undercutters will always undercut. all of the offers above placentica were on a completely newer calendar day. no amount of gradation would have given placentica more sales. if 20k units were bought lowest price first, they would have been absorbed by those undercutters first. and only then if the demand exceeded the supply would it have started to get into placenticas offer.

 

lets say there is a theoretical 5k units worth of demand on top of the undercutter demand. please tell me how placentica is supposed to make more money by offering:

1k @ 1960.

1k @ 1955.

1k @ 1950.

1k @ 1925.

1k @ 1900.

it stands to reason that all of these undercutters would be beating this 1900 price - not the 1960 price as well.

this entire debate is silly. if you want to talk about the psychology of the market - that is fine. but there is no mathematical or economical merit to your suggestion that smaller cheaper offers will increase the price and make more money.

 

the only way it could is if placentica started from the previous high (1965) and gradated like this (to continue my simplistic example)

 

1k @ 1964

1k @ 1963

1k @ 1962

1k @ 1961

1k @ 1960

 

this represents a whopping $10,000 profit. to put this in perspective it is 9.8m in sales compared to 9.81m in sales. assuming placentica makes around 15m a day in cash and resources (probably underestimated - not going to calculate it though) - that represents 0.06% of his daily income. i think he can afford to be 'lazy' here. squeezing lemons and whatnot.

 

i know i dont speak for everyone (or anyone really) but once my daily trading income fell to below 33% of my daily passive income i felt it not worthwhile to put in the hours required. thats 5x higher than the margin gained in this gradation that would require 5x the work.

 

you can scale these figures at your leisure. we arent making advanced derivative markets here folks lol. if you think offering the same number of units at a lower cost average will make you more money than by all means go for it

 

 

[Buorhann]

When seabasstion spits out number examples, my underwear gets wet.

[丂ħ̧i̧₣ɫ̵γ͘ ̶™]

Generally if the prices are fairly low, I'll just sell to the highest buying price. Though I've noticed some of the buyers are middlemen so now I tend stray away and sell to players I like or AAs I like. 

Other than that, if the ppu is higher than normal I start buying out and acting like a middleman as well, selling for more, but right now prices are fluctuating far too much, I need to pay denbts, and I only produce uranium.

[Dubayoo]

On 7/14/2017 at 2:39 PM, seabasstion said:

please explain to me how 5k units priced at an average price of 2000 (in one lump sum) lowers the price of steel compared to 5k units priced at an average of 1950 based on your gradation

 

1000 @ 2000

1000 @ 1975

1000 @ 1950

1000 @  1925

1000 @ 1900

 

vs

 

5000 @ 2000

 

also: tell me how the undercutters that will come in after this 1900 price will help raise the price compared to undercutters at a 2000 price. the only reason the math worked in jp's example above was he cut the supply from 95k units to 50k units while keeping the demand (20k) units the same. like i said - he artificially reduced supply. thats not how this market works especially when you consider that undercutters will always undercut. all of the offers above placentica were on a completely newer calendar day. no amount of gradation would have given placentica more sales. if 20k units were bought lowest price first, they would have been absorbed by those undercutters first. and only then if the demand exceeded the supply would it have started to get into placenticas offer.

 

lets say there is a theoretical 5k units worth of demand on top of the undercutter demand. please tell me how placentica is supposed to make more money by offering:

1k @ 1960.

1k @ 1955.

1k @ 1950.

1k @ 1925.

1k @ 1900.

it stands to reason that all of these undercutters would be beating this 1900 price - not the 1960 price as well.

this entire debate is silly. if you want to talk about the psychology of the market - that is fine. but there is no mathematical or economical merit to your suggestion that smaller cheaper offers will increase the price and make more money.

 

the only way it could is if placentica started from the previous high (1965) and gradated like this (to continue my simplistic example)

 

1k @ 1964

1k @ 1963

1k @ 1962

1k @ 1961

1k @ 1960

 

this represents a whopping $10,000 profit. to put this in perspective it is 9.8m in sales compared to 9.81m in sales. assuming placentica makes around 15m a day in cash and resources (probably underestimated - not going to calculate it though) - that represents 0.06% of his daily income. i think he can afford to be 'lazy' here. squeezing lemons and whatnot.

 

i know i dont speak for everyone (or anyone really) but once my daily trading income fell to below 33% of my daily passive income i felt it not worthwhile to put in the hours required. thats 5x higher than the margin gained in this gradation that would require 5x the work.

 

you can scale these figures at your leisure. we arent making advanced derivative markets here folks lol. if you think offering the same number of units at a lower cost average will make you more money than by all means go for it

 

 

 

It's pretty simple really.  If you create a ladder of posts, then it doesn't set a price floor.  Instead, it suggests you're willing to wait a little longer for greater amounts of product to be sold while waiting shorter for lesser amounts of product to be sold.  The larger the increments, the greater the difference in waiting. 

Regarding undercutters, they don't have the same effect because large scale purchasers or temporary boosts in demand will go through some of your ladder at cheaper prices before more expensive prices.  Undercutters also have to account for realizing that the price will not be fixed at a certain level for long, so they have to reduce their competitiveness or else sacrifice gains.  In fact, this is actually a good counter to uncutting because undercutters will have to undercut your most competitive price while leaving the interval between your most competitive and next most competitive alone.  That means you make more profit on the amount at the next most competitive price.

This psychology and technique is rather common across online game economies as well.  It's kind of strange you're unfamiliar with this.

Edited July 16, 2017 by Dubayoo

[seabasstion]

if you price it low enough with a small enough volume the undercutters will just buy it to flip it. all you will be doing is selling at a lower price point and shifting the supply from you to them. large scale purchasers will be going through the ladder of undercutters regardless if you create a ceiling 50 ppu above the now created undercut price point or if you create your own ladder. its simply just more rungs that these large scale purchases will need to get through with you having more rungs in the middle. undercutters dont care if you have 100 units listed or 10000 units listed at price x. they will price it x-(rand 1,5) unless the difference is large enough between the best offer and the second best offer that they would consider buying it just to make a trade.

 

if youre touching on the psychology - like i said that is one thing. but the original post was rooted in a flawed mathematical reasoning because they simply just cut the supply in half to try and prove a point. and as for psychology argument - go back to my juice vs the squeeze. if a nation is in the position to sell a large enough volume of a resource to disrupt the market and create a ceiling than they probably arent going to want to put in 5x the effort to make another 10k give or take. 

 

im familiar with your line of thinking - again just because i disagree  does not mean i do not understand. you still have not demonstrated how you make more money via this ladder method other than pretty much saying the exact same generalized statement. 

 

im not sure if youre a reroll or not but ive closely followed this market 10x longer than your nation has been around. in this game, undercutters will always undercut as long as there is some form of margin between the buy market and sell market. and it only realistically has to be 2% to start seeing action between traders. if the market is already within 2% your ladder method will just drive it closer to an even swap which at that point you might as well just sell it to the highest bidder. this doesn't even account for the people that simply just undercut their offer to be the lowest with their standard sale of their wares.

 

creating more rungs of a ladder does not create more supply. if i post 1million steel at a gradation of 1 ppu and spread it out over 1000 price points (lets imagine the spread between the buy and sell would support this) all ive done is lower the price point at which 

1) undercutters will undercut me - the market is now even worth 'less'

2) undercutters will buy me out to a price that is more reasonable - all i've done is sell my steel at a discount to someone that will just immediately undercut whatever price point they stopped buying at and try to flip it

 

in scenario 1 when big buyers come in they would have to chew through all the undercutters to get to my discounted steel listings. 

in scenario 2 when big buyers come in they would have to chew through all the undercutters tot get to my discounted steel listings that haven't already been bought at discount.

neither of those make me any more money. all they serve to do is increase the listing time/maintenance while lowering my personal income. if you dont think undercutters will always undercut just look at the first image posted. trade 7 had a reasonable 2720 units of steel listed. it was undercut by numars the next calendar day. this reasonable 2720 could easily be one of your 'ladders'. and guess what - it had undercut by 6 ppu a trade of 800 steel.

im not even sure why im still typing at this point. i dont really care to be honest since i havent been active in the trading game for quite a few moons. perhaps im just captivated why anyone would want to increase their workload to make less money in quite possibly the simplest case of an econ 101 example of supply and demand. i suppose some people just like to over-engineer things to a fault

from my own personal experience as a big buyer on these sell markets - i actually will go out and seek large volume sellers so i dont get hit with annoying captchas every time i want to flip my food for some gas or whatever. politics and war...more like politics and click the 3rd world stores 

[Azaghul]

47 minutes ago, seabasstion said:

if you price it low enough with a small enough volume the undercutters will just buy it to flip it. all you will be doing is selling at a lower price point and shifting the supply from you to them. large scale purchasers will be going through the ladder of undercutters regardless if you create a ceiling 50 ppu above the now created undercut price point or if you create your own ladder. its simply just more rungs that these large scale purchases will need to get through with you having more rungs in the middle. undercutters dont care if you have 100 units listed or 10000 units listed at price x. they will price it x-(rand 1,5) unless the difference is large enough between the best offer and the second best offer that they would consider buying it just to make a trade.

 

if youre touching on the psychology - like i said that is one thing. but the original post was rooted in a flawed mathematical reasoning because they simply just cut the supply in half to try and prove a point. and as for psychology argument - go back to my juice vs the squeeze. if a nation is in the position to sell a large enough volume of a resource to disrupt the market and create a ceiling than they probably arent going to want to put in 5x the effort to make another 10k give or take. 

 

im familiar with your line of thinking - again just because i disagree  does not mean i do not understand. you still have not demonstrated how you make more money via this ladder method other than pretty much saying the exact same generalized statement. 

 

im not sure if youre a reroll or not but ive closely followed this market 10x longer than your nation has been around. in this game, undercutters will always undercut as long as there is some form of margin between the buy market and sell market. and it only realistically has to be 2% to start seeing action between traders. if the market is already within 2% your ladder method will just drive it closer to an even swap which at that point you might as well just sell it to the highest bidder. this doesn't even account for the people that simply just undercut their offer to be the lowest with their standard sale of their wares.

 

creating more rungs of a ladder does not create more supply. if i post 1million steel at a gradation of 1 ppu and spread it out over 1000 price points (lets imagine the spread between the buy and sell would support this) all ive done is lower the price point at which 

1) undercutters will undercut me - the market is now even worth 'less'

2) undercutters will buy me out to a price that is more reasonable - all i've done is sell my steel at a discount to someone that will just immediately undercut whatever price point they stopped buying at and try to flip it

 

in scenario 1 when big buyers come in they would have to chew through all the undercutters to get to my discounted steel listings. 

in scenario 2 when big buyers come in they would have to chew through all the undercutters tot get to my discounted steel listings that haven't already been bought at discount.

neither of those make me any more money. all they serve to do is increase the listing time/maintenance while lowering my personal income. if you dont think undercutters will always undercut just look at the first image posted. trade 7 had a reasonable 2720 units of steel listed. it was undercut by numars the next calendar day. this reasonable 2720 could easily be one of your 'ladders'. and guess what - it had undercut by 6 ppu a trade of 800 steel.

im not even sure why im still typing at this point. i dont really care to be honest since i havent been active in the trading game for quite a few moons. perhaps im just captivated why anyone would want to increase their workload to make less money in quite possibly the simplest case of an econ 101 example of supply and demand. i suppose some people just like to over-engineer things to a fault

from my own personal experience as a big buyer on these sell markets - i actually will go out and seek large volume sellers so i dont get hit with annoying captchas every time i want to flip my food for some gas or whatever. politics and war...more like politics and click the 3rd world stores 

Well said.  I don't have much to add, just want to say I'm in the same boat in terms of having stopped high frequency trading because it stopped making enough money relative to my nations income to be worth it.  There was a while where we used to compete a lot!

When I was a high frequency trader I'd sometimes do what he's talking about.  And I'd also often ignore small outlier trades, knowing that someone would probably want more than that offer and eat it up then get to my trade.

It really comes down to how much time you want to put into it.  It's not worth it to me to spend the time on max trading effeciency any more.  If it is for other people, more power to them.

Edited July 16, 2017 by Azaghul

[Caecus]

...Am I the only one who finds it funny that JP Morgan here doesn't have a complete monopoly on the steel market and is extremely annoyed at being undercut by a kangaroo? 

 

Supply and demand, my children. Create demand by reducing supply. Simple as that. 

[Anneal]

Meanwhile in the bauxite market...

[Horsecock]

wew lad

[Buck Turgidson]

The market works the way it works. A smart trader thrives on its inefficiency.