Guild Wars 2

Someone please teach me how to invest. I am terrible.

I foresaw Rosemary going up in price, so I bought a stack at 1s each. Over the next week, the price began to plummet, so I bailed and sold them at 80c each. Now they are ~4s each, a few weeks later.

I invested in Super Skins when they were rapidly increasing in price. Bought a Super Shield at 28g. It then did nothing but drop, and now it’s worth 11g.

Another 2 items which I will not mention have dropped by about 20% in the week or 2 since I invested in them. I’m hoping that this is going to be similar to what happened with Rosemary, and I will see a 300% increase, but I can’t be sure.

I opted not to invest in Sentintel’s Intricate Gossamer Insignias when they were 1.5g, and here they are over 6g now.

I am consistently making the wrong decisions. How do you guys do it? I’m just losing money. I made money flipping items in GW1, but not in GW2.

Hi,

To be honest, I don’t think that anyone that has been successful at investing on items will tell you their secrets in public places like this, where everyone can do the same type of investments.

My tips would be:

1. Learn from your mistakes: There is no secret formula for investing, you should compare what happened with your previous investments and see what’s wrong (which you asked, I know). Sometimes the problem is that people wait too long in the hopes of getting a big profit, like 60g per item (taking as an example the Super Greatsword Skin).

You need to learn to develop that cunning eye, to foresee when an item has too many offers which might (sometimes, as I’m saying you can’t really take for granted all the times) when it might become a price drop. Start by analyzing and playing with the Trading Post and keep an eye on how the prices change.

2. Study the market: Keep track on how popular items are becoming over the weeks, look at the “News and announcements” threads, hell even on the other threads in here or around the web, usually there is important information about upcoming changes or events that people overlook.

For instance, some weeks prior to the Southsun LS event, Karka Shells still had an “OK” price, that would had been a great time to sell any surplus shells before the event was even announced by Anet (there was a lot of speculation before the announcement) and still get some profit (Karka Shells are dropping way too easy now, lowering the demand).

In short, study the market, keep an eye on events. Can’t get into much more detail because it won’t be good for the investors ;D (Btw, sorry if my post was kind of confusing, English isn’t my main language).

Hope this helps in some way, if anyone feels that I’m wrong don’t hesitate to bash me, we can all learn

go watch the seinfeld episode, ‘The Stock Tip’
summary: George has a friend of a friend that has an inside tip to invest in a stock. Jerry and George buy some. A couple days later, the friend-of-a-friend is in the hospital and the stock is worth half of what it was. Jerry sells his shares, George hangs onto them. A couple days later, Jerry checks the price and it’s way up. Later, George says he more than doubled his money.

Player demand will determine what players are willing to pay. In the example of Super skins, yes there’s a chance that the first batch may never appear again, so you would assume prices would increase (i.e. Halloween skins). But you also have to remember that there were two ways to get Super skins. 1) Baubles and 2) Chest drops. Because there were multiple ways to get it, the skin wasn’t as rare as you’d think. I can say with some certainty that if the Super skins were only available from end boss chests, the conversation would be completely different.

Just like real life you have to have information. More information than the next guy. There are players with upwards of 10,000 gold. They all know someone who knows someone and know what’s going to happen in a future update. By the time an item really starts moving its already too late.

Are you diversifying? That’s an important aspect of any investment. I often see people find a good market and stick to it, never branching out. Then when the market changes, they’re stuck.

Also, sort of like Play said, pay attention to what people are posting, both here and at other sites. You might not get ‘insider’ information, but you can often hear about things that are coming a few days/weeks in advance. It’s risky, but if you diversify and put only a small amount of your money into the speculation, you can handle the risk.

Finally, lots of markets are pretty steady. The lower level crafting ingredients especially don’t move up and down very much or very often. They’re also very high demand/supply markets, so you can move your stuff fast. If you’re worried about money, check the past month’s data on gw2spidy, and pick something that hasn’t changed a lot, but still makes a profit.

Curo.2483:

Someone please teach me how to invest. I am terrible.

I foresaw Rosemary going up in price, so I bought a stack at 1s each. Over the next week, the price began to plummet, so I bailed and sold them at 80c each. Now they are ~4s each, a few weeks later.

I invested in Super Skins when they were rapidly increasing in price. Bought a Super Shield at 28g. It then did nothing but drop, and now it’s worth 11g.

Another 2 items which I will not mention have dropped by about 20% in the week or 2 since I invested in them. I’m hoping that this is going to be similar to what happened with Rosemary, and I will see a 300% increase, but I can’t be sure.

I opted not to invest in Sentintel’s Intricate Gossamer Insignias when they were 1.5g, and here they are over 6g now.

I am consistently making the wrong decisions. How do you guys do it? I’m just losing money. I made money flipping items in GW1, but not in GW2.

Rosemary Sprigs are at 12 silver now.

Another generally good tip, (from John Smith most recently): have goals & set limits. Decide what kind of profit you want from an item & the kind of losses you will tolerate.

Thanks for the tips guys, I really appreciate it!

I saw that Seinfeld ep, so I know what you mean.

And yeah…Rosemary…sigh.

Long term(multi year) investments are simple, buy items that have been confirmed to be discontinued or limited.

Karka pets, Flame Shaman Pet, SAB Skins for starters.

Since pets can always be resold, skins are a better option for profit.

Curo.2483:

Someone please teach me how to invest. I am terrible.

I foresaw Rosemary going up in price, so I bought a stack at 1s each. Over the next week, the price began to plummet, so I bailed and sold them at 80c each. Now they are ~4s each, a few weeks later.

I invested in Super Skins when they were rapidly increasing in price. Bought a Super Shield at 28g. It then did nothing but drop, and now it’s worth 11g.

Another 2 items which I will not mention have dropped by about 20% in the week or 2 since I invested in them. I’m hoping that this is going to be similar to what happened with Rosemary, and I will see a 300% increase, but I can’t be sure.

I opted not to invest in Sentintel’s Intricate Gossamer Insignias when they were 1.5g, and here they are over 6g now.

I am consistently making the wrong decisions. How do you guys do it? I’m just losing money. I made money flipping items in GW1, but not in GW2.

never buy items during release unless you plan to dump it within the same week… items always have high demand during the event… then drop like a rock when people don’t see much demand and all the merchants are trying to sell…. like with the flame and frost items. if you have the new blue minis, it’s a good time to sell them, a week after the event they will probably be 1/2 the price.

If you invest (longer than a few days) you also have to take into account other people who are doing the same and how long the extra supply has been around… and how long you are willing to wait it out.

Armoured scales are a great example – bots were hammering the barracuda and it was down to 4-6s. I, like a lot of others were hoarding at those price levels. I sold most of mine around 10-12s thinking what a great job – A month or two later once what I will call investor supply had dried up, up they went again to reflect the real supply. (20s plus).