Guild Wars 2

I am just starting to fool around with the TP. More because I am an economics major and it numbers/goods/buying and selling all interest me than making mad bank. I have 4 80s that have all exotics except my ele who has most exotics, but I haven’t played him much to finish the jewelry part of it.

For the “wealthy” people… Are your profits geared towards long term trends?

It seems to me like starting out you just grind really fast sells. But as you rise up and have surplus “capital” (in this case moar coins) it would turn over to long term investments rather than volume sales.

Most long term investments require historical data to identify trends. I don’t think that GW2 has been out long enough to be able to analyze those trends. Also, it depends on your definition of a long term investment. If you’re thinking of buying something now, holding onto it for a month, or a year, then selling it, I would advise against it. The only commodity that I’ve seen that may be worth investing in long term would be Gems. The price of Gems has been steadily increasing since the games release, but even then….all it takes is ArenaNet adjusting that currency conversion to make your investment completely worthless.

Most of the investments I’ve been seeing made and being talked about are at longest a week. Those investors are looking at the cyclical weekly trends of items, such as crafting materials, buying low when the supply is at its highest, then holding onto them for several days until the supply begins to drop and the demand increases.

I think that most investors are investing more in the short term by either immediately flipping items, or posting large buy orders, then relisting items the following day. It really depends on the investor and the time they want to spend keeping an eye on the Trading Post.

Personally….I place buy orders before I log out, then pick up the items the next day, then do something with them and make sell listings.

@Charismatic: Much like poker is online, the trading I consider the long term and short term differently than real world trading activities.

I played online poker quite a bit in my past. It makes no sense online to groom an opponent for an hour or two if (s)he can log off faster. Much in the same way, as you said, buying something to sell a month later would be silly. The game changes a lot faster than lets say buying/trading in real life, because the govt. takes time to add regulations or change interests rate, or markets adapt to conditions slower. I guess what I am saying is virtual economies do not suffer “lag” as the real world does….

So my definition of long term would be a day to a week tops.

skins from events are good, the halloween ones are still going up in price, for example i bought 40 dagger skins for 2g40s two days ago, selling them for 5 each now

John Smith.4610:

Short answer is usually a hybrid, but you also have to wonder how much is long term investment for profit and how much of it is investment against inflation. Holding liquid wealth in any economy is a mistake.

But there is an achievement that requires holding on to at least 200 gold!

Khisanth.2948:

But there is an achievement that requires holding on to at least 200 gold!

Just wait a year to do that achievement. By then, inflation should be in full effect and 200g then will be like 2g is now….everyone will have that achievement without any work whatsoever, lol.

It’s real easy to get 200g if you stop spending.

If you make 10g a day and put 5g in the bank, you’ll get the achievement in a month.

If only I could make 10g a day. I am one of the poor folks. maybe it is the 5 400 level crafting skills that I will never make my money back on ;-) I basically bought levels with gold

John Smith.4610:

Holding liquid wealth in any economy is a mistake.

Wow….

Headline: “’Don’t Hold Gold’, States Arenanet Economist”.

Svarty.8019:

John Smith.4610:

Holding liquid wealth in any economy is a mistake.

Wow….

Headline: “’Don’t Hold Gold’, States Arenanet Economist”.

What he means is that liquid wealth such as currencies are subject to inflationary forces which translates to loss of purchasing power. Holding hard assets is generally a better idea.

However, I sold all my hard assets back in mid december because I anticipated reduced demand and over supply. I had a feeling that there would be more sellers than buyers. Aside from 3 particular items, everything went down in value.

Gold has gained quite a bit of purchasing power latley.

im not a “wealthy player” but i cernly have more than most and i have made quite som moneh on the tp. soi could answer it.

atm i’m only doing long term investment. such as skins from Halloween or mini pets from the kraka event. because those are bound to gain in value. meaning that i cant lose my investment. (well, a very small chance). these kind of items usually doubles in price over time if not even triples. sure, it takes a month or 2. but i will get the coin in the end. and i don’t mind having 4+ legendary + anything i want in 2 or 3 years if anything that the Anet-devs have said is true, then I plan with sticking with the game.

however in order to make some decent money for a monthly 2:1 return, you need quite a large capital. so i got my money from playing the tp actively. i managed to make 700g from the tp before my market crashed. and then i had a hard time to find a new market. also i found myself not playing the game for the most part. I played the tp for 90% of the time. witch i don’t like, so I started to make long term investments, because those require a very small amount of time and a quit easy to find imo.

Yeah, like Waraxx, I’m not ‘wealthy’ either but I know TP well enough to consider it like a small piggy bank of pocket money. If I need 3-45g in say an hour, I know i can easily get that with 1G in hand, in fact you can do it even if you only have 50s. You just need to figure out the rate of returns on your investment. OP, since you’re an economics major, you’re probably very familiar with compounding. Using ‘easy’ markets, you can easily make 10G per day, with around 10-20 minutes of effort. Having utilized these, that’s when you start to have to find ‘bigger’ markets. Unfortunately they also seem to turn gold much slower.
For me, a week is more or less the amount of time related risk I’m willing to take. However, I don’t do much plain speculation like what most people seem to do (buy x amount of Y, wait for price to go up). Rather I prefer flipping items with good spread and solid ‘real’ demand.
So I guess the question you’re really asking is are investments geared solely towards long term? I guess the answer, for me that is, would be to create a diversified portfolio. Imagine TP related activities like salvaging, crafting, farming, flipping, long-term speculation as industries. I’d spread my activities over a broad spectrum to minimize risk pertaining to single industries. Personally for me, I’d saturate crafting fast items and salvaging markets first since they give more or less guaranteed returns. Next I’d craft items that might take up to a week to to sell. Any surplus goes to flipping exotics, sometimes rares, and finally a small portion of whats left into something i think has a good chance of price appreciation. Once in a while I’d dabble with the mystic forge, and depending on the market for raws, sometimes even bags.

Vol.5241:

It’s real easy to get 200g if you stop spending.

If you make 10g a day and put 5g in the bank, you’ll get the achievement in a month.

The concept is solid, but maths is a bit off. Saving 5g a day, you’ll have 200G in exactly 40 days.

On the other hand, if say you set aside 5G a day, and invest it for 95% per day, you have excess of 200G in 6 days, IF you can find the market for that.

A more realistic approach (compared to the one I gave just now), however, would be to put 5G daily into a portfolio that gives roughly 25% day to day. You’ll have 200G on the 11th day. This third approach is actually very doable for anyone willing to try. 25% is something you can easily, almost instantly, get from bags and salvage, with a bit of homework.

This is for the OP:

Your general hunch is good.

You don’t have to be wealthy to apply certain concepts. One of the biggest rules I follow is to never carry more than 25% of my total wealth in gold. Idle money is wasted money, which applies to the guild wars world as well as the real world.

Thus, my answer is this: you don’t need to stop your short term buy/sell. Do it for as long as you occupy your cash on hand, but the more idle gold that sits in your account, the more you should turn an eye to long term.

You don’t HAVE to look to the blue chip stocks or the mutual funds (i.e. ectoplasms) in GW2. Stability is nice, but the biggest difference between your life and Tyria is that in the latter, you don’t have rent, or need to eat or drink. You’re free to take larger risks with your money, with no catastrophic consequence! You’ll want to follow some of your hunches.

Just make sure to diversify , and diversify some more. Even being 100% sure of the merit behind one investment is not good enough. We live in a universe where new recipes are introduced, changes are made, and supplies (drop rates) are tweaked by an invisible hand. $&%! happens

Some of it is projecting – a gamble on what will sell next. I do think just holding onto gold isnt the best thing. Always be on the lookout and put the money to use.
Another strat is when you think a bot ban is coming stock up and sell right after the spike peaks (24-36hrs). Minimize risk and understand that there are people and tactics used to peak certain markets as well.
I got caught a couple of times on bubbles myself. I am also new to the TP. Only started around Dec.
I have pages and pages of spreadsheets that track my purch and sales and profit. It gives me a good idea of inventory and speed at which items sell and ways to increase profit.
Good Luck.

The two biggest rules of playing the trading post for profit:

1.) Don’t invest all your gold in the same thing/area.

2.) Gold sitting in your inventory is gold that is not working to increase it’s value.

Bair.8240:

2.) Gold sitting in your inventory is gold that is not working to increase it’s value.

Whilst I agree with this statement fundamentally, I have problems with it’s connotations. Combined with another market cliche: that constant effort is required to stay on top of the market, the connotation is that if you aren’t constantly working the market, then you are at fault and are not keeping up with inflation.

Svarty.8019:

Bair.8240:

2.) Gold sitting in your inventory is gold that is not working to increase it’s value.

Whilst I agree with this statement fundamentally, I have problems with it’s connotations. Combined with another market cliche: that constant effort is required to stay on top of the market, the connotation is that if you aren’t constantly working the market, then you are at fault and are not keeping up with inflation.

You are correct. That is a far better way to state that.

John Smith.4610:

Holding liquid wealth in any economy is a mistake.

Please flush it down the mystic toilet. (or any other gold sink)

:P

I tend to hold liquid wealth (~80% of my coins) simply because it is troublesome to keep track of hundreds of stacks of items.

100g investment capital is all you need to start rolling 30~50g per day. (look for high margin items)

I think this entire thread sums up one of the two things I like least about this game. In order to do well, you really shouldn’t “play” it – at least, not in the traditional sense (jumping puzzles, WvW, dungeons, PvP, story, grinding, whatever). The people who do the “best” in the game (which is subjective – but certainly the people with the most purchasing power, which is objective) are the ones playing the TP pvp game. It can be frustrating to be particularly bad at TP pvp and know that it makes me worse, relatively, as opposed to just being bad at playing the game, which seems more palatable. The main consolation prize is that most progression is horizontal, but there’s still a false premise generally being sold: that skill or time or effort playing the game is rewarding. TP pvp is far more rewarding with less time or effort by an evidently wide margin. And even horizontal progression is still intended progression: and still purchasing power reigns supreme.

Of course, an end-game that consisted of high-end raiding (as opposed to TP pvp and gambling, the other major form of progression) was something I didn’t care for much, either, so maybe it’s all relative in the end. But it’s just packaged differently enough that it seems disingenuous to my Western tastes.

arabeth.2361:

I think this entire thread sums up one of the two things I like least about this game. In order to do well, you really shouldn’t “play” it – at least, not in the traditional sense (jumping puzzles, WvW, dungeons, PvP, story, grinding, whatever). The people who do the “best” in the game (which is subjective – but certainly the people with the most purchasing power, which is objective) are the ones playing the TP pvp game. It can be frustrating to be particularly bad at TP pvp and know that it makes me worse, relatively, as opposed to just being bad at playing the game, which seems more palatable. The main consolation prize is that most progression is horizontal, but there’s still a false premise generally being sold: that skill or time or effort playing the game is rewarding. TP pvp is far more rewarding with less time or effort by an evidently wide margin. And even horizontal progression is still intended progression: and still purchasing power reigns supreme.

Of course, an end-game that consisted of high-end raiding (as opposed to TP pvp and gambling, the other major form of progression) was something I didn’t care for much, either, so maybe it’s all relative in the end. But it’s just packaged differently enough that it seems disingenuous to my Western tastes.

You also need to keep in mind that there is more than one hard currency in the game. You can play and reap the rewards of Karma that allows you to acquire many of the same things that the TP provides. You can play the game and acquire dungeon tokens, or fractal relics, or even influence. True that you won’t have the gold in your pocket that someone playing TP PvP will have, but that’s just one way to keep score when in fact there are many, many different ways that MMO players keep score: rank, achievement points, guild rosters, character customization through skins, WvW tier, and the ever subjective “fun” ie how much you actively enjoy making score. Gold is just one measure of wealth/reward.

arabeth.2361:

I think this entire thread sums up one of the two things I like least about this game. In order to do well, you really shouldn’t “play” it – at least, not in the traditional sense (jumping puzzles, WvW, dungeons, PvP, story, grinding, whatever). The people who do the “best” in the game (which is subjective – but certainly the people with the most purchasing power, which is objective) are the ones playing the TP pvp game. It can be frustrating to be particularly bad at TP pvp and know that it makes me worse, relatively, as opposed to just being bad at playing the game, which seems more palatable. The main consolation prize is that most progression is horizontal, but there’s still a false premise generally being sold: that skill or time or effort playing the game is rewarding. TP pvp is far more rewarding with less time or effort by an evidently wide margin. And even horizontal progression is still intended progression: and still purchasing power reigns supreme.

Of course, an end-game that consisted of high-end raiding (as opposed to TP pvp and gambling, the other major form of progression) was something I didn’t care for much, either, so maybe it’s all relative in the end. But it’s just packaged differently enough that it seems disingenuous to my Western tastes.

How can it be objective to state that the ones with the most money are doing the best?

I think you mean, “How can it be subjective?”

Wealth is used as an objective measure of wealth because a person’s wealth is a concrete number. Same thing goes for most ways to measure a person’s progress. Horizontal progression / cool-looking stuff measurement is subjective, and avoids the whole measuring-contest problem that a lot of players have. But currencies, weapon stats, etc are all objective ways to measure.

Gilosean.3805:

I think you mean, “How can it be subjective?”

Wealth is used as an objective measure of wealth because a person’s wealth is a concrete number. Same thing goes for most ways to measure a person’s progress. Horizontal progression / cool-looking stuff measurement is subjective, and avoids the whole measuring-contest problem that a lot of players have. But currencies, weapon stats, etc are all objective ways to measure.

I believe this could be countered with;

• the claim that wealth is subjective because if it is mostly illiquid, as Arenanet Economist John Smith recommends, then it is subject to the whims and emotions of those who determine prices (i.e. the collective consciousness of the market).

• the claim that “cool-looking stuff” are not as subjective as you suggest because to a large degree their desirability is determined by how difficult they are to acquire: people desire things that are more difficult to acquire.

Gilosean.3805:

I think you mean, “How can it be subjective?”

Wealth is used as an objective measure of wealth because a person’s wealth is a concrete number. Same thing goes for most ways to measure a person’s progress. Horizontal progression / cool-looking stuff measurement is subjective, and avoids the whole measuring-contest problem that a lot of players have. But currencies, weapon stats, etc are all objective ways to measure.

No, I meant objective. In what way does it make you “complete” the game by having lots of gold? Does it make it more fun? Do you complete more dungeons, more content by having gold?

In this game, the anwser is pretty much no.