Guild Wars 2

Forum bug – read this good example of manipulation:
http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/25/investing/oil-production-freeze-opec-qatar/

ANET are the only ones which can manipulate the market in this case.
ANET has manipulated the market by reducing the output of salvaging from items.

Players cannot manipulate the market – they can speculate

Sorry its me, i am building an army of abominations to destroy LA. shhh.

Unfortunately people get bent out of shape by their interpretation of a word.

Manipulation: to handle or control (a tool, mechanism, etc.), typically in a skillful manner.
Every person who buys or sells on the TP is manipulating the price. If you buy up 10 pieces of something and the price drops down to the next highest seller, you have manipulated the price. If you buy 10k pieces of something you are doing exactly the same thing. It all comes down to quantities and at what break point each person deems it to be too much manipulation. But in the end it is just personal interpretation.
So Manipulation is a good thing. It is the engine on which a free-market system is powered.

Speculation: the forming of a theory or conjecture without firm evidence.
So speculation is just a guess, based on perceived factors which give an expectation of a future event. If you speculate well, you make money. If you don’t, you loose money.

Just because someone speculates on an item and manipulates the quantities greatly does not necessarily point to foreknowledge and an insider-trading conspiracy.

So IF ANET decided to FREEZE production of Leather Squares = Manipulation.
If player BUY lots of Leather which is on Market = Speculation if they relist at higher prices.
If player BUY lots of leather and then sells to merchant = Speculation by forcing supply which is left to raise in price (esp if loss is minor). They fixed this to ensure that players now lose 15% instead of 1% of cost by selling to vendor a while ago.

I would disagree on your term of manipulation its too broad Yalora in this context that we are looking at- we are interested in ‘market manipulation’.

Market manipulation is a deliberate attempt to interfere with the free and fair operation of the market and create artificial, false or misleading appearances with respect to the price of, or market for, a security, commodity or currency.

Which includes more than simply holding supply and controlling all sources of it.

TPMN: Yes I am aware (visions of Macro and Micro Economics come flooding back) but the point is, if someone does fairly speculate, and buys up most or all of the supply of something one could say that it does interfere with the free and fair operation of a market, for a period of time, until the market sees that change and adjusts accordingly. Hopefully for the mass buyer it adjusts favorably and they make the money they were speculating they would.

I am not saying that this move was done with any actual foreknowledge or not, just that it easily could have just been a mass purchase based on someone’s legitimate Trading Post use.

Nope – someone buying up all the pent up items for sale is not interfering with the market at all.

Its not bad either – they have not bought all the supply up at all.
To do that they would have to purchase the players themselves or ANET – the supply is still being generated by players.

The market has not been manipulated – it is operating correctly.

I bet John Smith bought them

What I consider TP manipulation is the case of the Recipe: Light of Dwayna. The price for that had been in the range of 15-20 gold from Dec 2013 to Dec 2014. On Dec 19 2014 it had a supply of ~553 and a price of ~11 gold. Over the next 2 weeks the supply was steadily bought up till it dropped to about 60. The prices from that point increased over time to up to a max of 447 gold and have currently only dropped down to ~95 gold. Over a year later, prices and supply have never gone back to their original levels.

One or more people made a lot of gold by buying up supply and reselling for the new, higher prices.

https://www.gw2tp.com/item/49480-recipe-light-of-dwayna?full=1

Nope – that is speculation of a ‘luxury’ item.
There has been no new supply – as ANET controls this.

TPMN.1483:

Nope – that is speculation of a ‘luxury’ item.
There has been no new supply – as ANET controls this.

How is it not manipulation of the price of an item with no new incoming supply?

Speculation, imo, is where you buy in anticipation that the rules will change and prices will go up. Say, you buy orbs at barely above vendor and hold them until the rules change and prices go up. That’s speculation. You “speculated” that the prices would increase. Supply is not limited and you can not get a major part of it and keep the prices high that way.

In the case of the Dwayna recipe, supply is limited. If you buy up the easily available supply then the market can’t recover. That’s manipulation as you buy a substantial part of available supply at a low price and the re-release it at the new higher prices.

Speculation: you buy low and hold till prices go up because of changes to the game.
Manipulation: you buy existing stock of a limited supply item at a low price and resell at higher prices because you own the surplus.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

What I consider TP manipulation is the case of the Recipe: Light of Dwayna. The price for that had been in the range of 15-20 gold from Dec 2013 to Dec 2014. On Dec 19 2014 it had a supply of ~553 and a price of ~11 gold. Over the next 2 weeks the supply was steadily bought up till it dropped to about 60. The prices from that point increased over time to up to a max of 447 gold and have currently only dropped down to ~95 gold. Over a year later, prices and supply have never gone back to their original levels.

One or more people made a lot of gold by buying up supply and reselling for the new, higher prices.

https://www.gw2tp.com/item/49480-recipe-light-of-dwayna?full=1

In that case you could argue that all the supply listed at 15-20g was undervalued on the tp in the first place.

By the definition posted before, any interaction with the tp is a manipulation. ITs perfectly fine, if people buy listings on the tp, it doesnt matter for what value or in which volume, as long as buyer and seller agree on a price. The only malicious manipulation on the tp or the economy are insider trades, exploiting, botting and RMTs/ account hackers.

I think botting is quite under control and exploits are usually handled with a ban retroactively, even though they might do some damage to some markets. The worst offender are account hackers.
The amount of gold and mats duplicated through account restorations should have the biggest unintended impact on the economy.

Manipulation – Cornering the Market
Manipulation – Pump and Dump

Speculation

Ayrilana.1396:

Manipulation – Cornering the Market
Manipulation – Pump and Dump

Speculation

Looks like cornering markets nearly never is successful and pump and dump isnt illegal.

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

What I consider TP manipulation is the case of the Recipe: Light of Dwayna. The price for that had been in the range of 15-20 gold from Dec 2013 to Dec 2014. On Dec 19 2014 it had a supply of ~553 and a price of ~11 gold. Over the next 2 weeks the supply was steadily bought up till it dropped to about 60. The prices from that point increased over time to up to a max of 447 gold and have currently only dropped down to ~95 gold. Over a year later, prices and supply have never gone back to their original levels.

One or more people made a lot of gold by buying up supply and reselling for the new, higher prices.

https://www.gw2tp.com/item/49480-recipe-light-of-dwayna?full=1

In that case you could argue that all the supply listed at 15-20g was undervalued on the tp in the first place.

By the definition posted before, any interaction with the tp is a manipulation. ITs perfectly fine, if people buy listings on the tp, it doesnt matter for what value or in which volume, as long as buyer and seller agree on a price. The only malicious manipulation on the tp or the economy are insider trades, exploiting, botting and RMTs/ account hackers.

I think botting is quite under control and exploits are usually handled with a ban retroactively, even though they might do some damage to some markets. The worst offender are account hackers.
The amount of gold and mats duplicated through account restorations should have the biggest unintended impact on the economy.

In that case you could argue that all the supply listed at 15-20g was undervalued on the tp in the first place

No, I don’t think you can argue that because it’s supply and demand that determine price. Price was set at demand and 500plus supply. By buying up supply down to 60 items, it’s now demand and new lower TP supply = higher price. By buying up and holding on to the surplus of an item with limited, fixed supply and re-releasing it slowly so as not to flood the market at the new higher prices, then that’s manipulation to make the prices higher by artificially limiting supply.

Wanze.8410:

Ayrilana.1396:

Manipulation – Cornering the Market
Manipulation – Pump and Dump

Speculation

Looks like cornering markets nearly never is successful and pump and dump isnt illegal.

I never said that it was illegal.

I too can play the link game with definitions

Market Manipulation

Look at that very first sentence and how it directly describes the exact situation.

It’s okay i know the crowd saying it’s all speculation will just come argue semantics. They are two sides of the same coin.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

What I consider TP manipulation is the case of the Recipe: Light of Dwayna. The price for that had been in the range of 15-20 gold from Dec 2013 to Dec 2014. On Dec 19 2014 it had a supply of ~553 and a price of ~11 gold. Over the next 2 weeks the supply was steadily bought up till it dropped to about 60. The prices from that point increased over time to up to a max of 447 gold and have currently only dropped down to ~95 gold. Over a year later, prices and supply have never gone back to their original levels.

One or more people made a lot of gold by buying up supply and reselling for the new, higher prices.

https://www.gw2tp.com/item/49480-recipe-light-of-dwayna?full=1

In that case you could argue that all the supply listed at 15-20g was undervalued on the tp in the first place.

By the definition posted before, any interaction with the tp is a manipulation. ITs perfectly fine, if people buy listings on the tp, it doesnt matter for what value or in which volume, as long as buyer and seller agree on a price. The only malicious manipulation on the tp or the economy are insider trades, exploiting, botting and RMTs/ account hackers.

I think botting is quite under control and exploits are usually handled with a ban retroactively, even though they might do some damage to some markets. The worst offender are account hackers.
The amount of gold and mats duplicated through account restorations should have the biggest unintended impact on the economy.

In that case you could argue that all the supply listed at 15-20g was undervalued on the tp in the first place

No, I don’t think you can argue that because it’s supply and demand that determine price. Price was set at demand and 500plus supply. By buying up supply down to 60 items, it’s now demand and new lower TP supply = higher price. By buying up and holding on to the surplus of an item with limited, fixed supply and re-releasing it slowly so as not to flood the market at the new higher prices, then that’s manipulation to make the prices higher by artificially limiting supply.

But how do you determine, if the 500 supply on the tp was all the supply left in the game?

And the end result would be the same, wether someone bought out the 500 supply and sold them for 100g each over the next year or those 500 listings stayed on the tp and got bought by consumers over the next year. Once the supply is consumed, the price is 100g. And if that guy finds 500 people to buy his stock at 100g, i think its hard to argue that the listings prior to the buy out werent undervalued.

IF i would craft an item that costs 100g in mats 500 times and list all of them between 15-20g and then someone buys out all of them because he thinks they are listed under value, is it me or him manipulating the market?

TexZero.7910:

I too can play the link game with definitions

Market Manipulation

Look at that very first sentence and how it directly describes the exact situation.

It’s okay i know the crowd saying it’s all speculation will just come argue semantics. They are two sides of the same coin.

It doesn’t apply in this case as they were simply buying up supply to sell at a later point in time when the believe prices will rise. You can argue that it’s semantics but the differences are important.

OR maybe someone just bought out those sections to refine them while going on a week long holiday and then sell them with a couple of copper profit once he is back.

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

What I consider TP manipulation is the case of the Recipe: Light of Dwayna. The price for that had been in the range of 15-20 gold from Dec 2013 to Dec 2014. On Dec 19 2014 it had a supply of ~553 and a price of ~11 gold. Over the next 2 weeks the supply was steadily bought up till it dropped to about 60. The prices from that point increased over time to up to a max of 447 gold and have currently only dropped down to ~95 gold. Over a year later, prices and supply have never gone back to their original levels.

One or more people made a lot of gold by buying up supply and reselling for the new, higher prices.

https://www.gw2tp.com/item/49480-recipe-light-of-dwayna?full=1

In that case you could argue that all the supply listed at 15-20g was undervalued on the tp in the first place.

By the definition posted before, any interaction with the tp is a manipulation. ITs perfectly fine, if people buy listings on the tp, it doesnt matter for what value or in which volume, as long as buyer and seller agree on a price. The only malicious manipulation on the tp or the economy are insider trades, exploiting, botting and RMTs/ account hackers.

I think botting is quite under control and exploits are usually handled with a ban retroactively, even though they might do some damage to some markets. The worst offender are account hackers.
The amount of gold and mats duplicated through account restorations should have the biggest unintended impact on the economy.

In that case you could argue that all the supply listed at 15-20g was undervalued on the tp in the first place

No, I don’t think you can argue that because it’s supply and demand that determine price. Price was set at demand and 500plus supply. By buying up supply down to 60 items, it’s now demand and new lower TP supply = higher price. By buying up and holding on to the surplus of an item with limited, fixed supply and re-releasing it slowly so as not to flood the market at the new higher prices, then that’s manipulation to make the prices higher by artificially limiting supply.

But how do you determine, if the 500 supply on the tp was all the supply left in the game?

And the end result would be the same, wether someone bought out the 500 supply and sold them for 100g each over the next year or those 500 listings stayed on the tp and got bought by consumers over the next year. Once the supply is consumed, the price is 100g. And if that guy finds 500 people to buy his stock at 100g, i think its hard to argue that the listings prior to the buy out werent undervalued.

IF i would craft an item that costs 100g in mats 500 times and list all of them between 15-20g and then someone buys out all of them because he thinks they are listed under value, is it me or him manipulating the market?

Obviously no one thinks that the current supply in the TP is all there is. But someone can look at an item and see where new supply comes from and get a good idea if it’s an item with high, low, medium or no new incoming supply.

This item was a good risk for someone who wanted to corner a market as best he could and buy low and sell high. And he succeeded. That’s manipulation. If no one had done that and the the prices rose over time as supply dropped, that’s not manipulation because no one actively tried to get those prices higher.

And that’s the crux of this case. One or more people actively bought up the available TP supply of an item with low incoming supply and by those actions artificially increased the prices so that they could resell the items they bought at the new higher prices.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

What I consider TP manipulation is the case of the Recipe: Light of Dwayna. The price for that had been in the range of 15-20 gold from Dec 2013 to Dec 2014. On Dec 19 2014 it had a supply of ~553 and a price of ~11 gold. Over the next 2 weeks the supply was steadily bought up till it dropped to about 60. The prices from that point increased over time to up to a max of 447 gold and have currently only dropped down to ~95 gold. Over a year later, prices and supply have never gone back to their original levels.

One or more people made a lot of gold by buying up supply and reselling for the new, higher prices.

https://www.gw2tp.com/item/49480-recipe-light-of-dwayna?full=1

In that case you could argue that all the supply listed at 15-20g was undervalued on the tp in the first place.

By the definition posted before, any interaction with the tp is a manipulation. ITs perfectly fine, if people buy listings on the tp, it doesnt matter for what value or in which volume, as long as buyer and seller agree on a price. The only malicious manipulation on the tp or the economy are insider trades, exploiting, botting and RMTs/ account hackers.

I think botting is quite under control and exploits are usually handled with a ban retroactively, even though they might do some damage to some markets. The worst offender are account hackers.
The amount of gold and mats duplicated through account restorations should have the biggest unintended impact on the economy.

In that case you could argue that all the supply listed at 15-20g was undervalued on the tp in the first place

No, I don’t think you can argue that because it’s supply and demand that determine price. Price was set at demand and 500plus supply. By buying up supply down to 60 items, it’s now demand and new lower TP supply = higher price. By buying up and holding on to the surplus of an item with limited, fixed supply and re-releasing it slowly so as not to flood the market at the new higher prices, then that’s manipulation to make the prices higher by artificially limiting supply.

But how do you determine, if the 500 supply on the tp was all the supply left in the game?

And the end result would be the same, wether someone bought out the 500 supply and sold them for 100g each over the next year or those 500 listings stayed on the tp and got bought by consumers over the next year. Once the supply is consumed, the price is 100g. And if that guy finds 500 people to buy his stock at 100g, i think its hard to argue that the listings prior to the buy out werent undervalued.

IF i would craft an item that costs 100g in mats 500 times and list all of them between 15-20g and then someone buys out all of them because he thinks they are listed under value, is it me or him manipulating the market?

Obviously no one thinks that the current supply in the TP is all there is. But someone can look at an item and see where new supply comes from and get a good idea if it’s an item with high, low, medium or no new incoming supply.

This item was a good risk for someone who wanted to corner a market as best he could and buy low and sell high. And he succeeded. That’s manipulation. If no one had done that and the the prices rose over time as supply dropped, that’s not manipulation because no one actively tried to get those prices higher.

And that’s the crux of this case. One or more people actively bought up the available TP supply of an item with low incoming supply and by those actions artificially increased the prices so that they could resell the items they bought at the new higher prices.

The crux of this case is that they thought that the item was undervalued at current prices and people are willing to pay more for it, while having no personal influence or knowledge about the supply outside the tp and wether new supply will be added to the market with a future update.

With items such as recipe of lyssa / dwayna / grenth – (these luxury items) lets take this example and compare it to real life items.

AUG 15, 2014
A 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO became the most valuable car in the world selling for $38 million at the Bonham’s Auction in Carmel, California on Thursday. But the gavel price disappointed the Ferrari cognoscenti, who predicted that the car might bring as much as $60 million.

The Car was purchased for much less in 1962.

In theory it is impossible to compare speculation on luxury items compared to ordinary bulk commodities.

I don’t know if cornering the market on a commodity with a bottomless supply you don’t control is a great long term investment.

Ayrilana.1396:

TexZero.7910:

I too can play the link game with definitions

Market Manipulation

Look at that very first sentence and how it directly describes the exact situation.

It’s okay i know the crowd saying it’s all speculation will just come argue semantics. They are two sides of the same coin.

It doesn’t apply in this case as they were simply buying up supply to sell at a later point in time when the believe prices will rise. You can argue that it’s semantics but the differences are important.

believe means inside information, which isn’t speculate.

I think you mean guess the price will go up.

Maybe someone guess legendary armor or backpiece will use tones of leather.

Here are two scenarios:

Given: Numbers are deliberately small to allow for simplicity of equation. It should be fairly easy to continue the numbers out to a larger market scheme

Available Market of non-finite good: 100 pieces
Time frame: 3 minutes
Price for the entire market of 100 pieces:
50 pcs $P
40 pcs $P+1
10 pcs $P+2

Scenario 1:
Person A buys 20 pcs at $P, a minute later Person B buys 20 pcs at $P, a minute later Person C buys 10 pcs at $P and 40 pcs at $P+1 but is not willing to buy any at P+2
Outcome – 90% of the market is depleted by three people in three minutes

Scenario 2
Person A buys 50 pcs at $P, and 40 pcs at $P+1 but is not willing to buy any more at $P+2
Outcome – 90% of the market is depleted by one person in one minute

Question: Are either of the Scenarios Market Manipulation?

Generally speaking, buying something because you think the price will go up is speculation, but if what you do has a large effect on the price that isn’t immediately washed out by other people, then it’s more manipulation, as you are the one driving up the price. Buying 1% of the supply is very different from buying 90% of the supply.

Then again, at some point it becomes pointless to argue over definitions. We don’t know intent — we just know that 90% of the supply vanished.

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

What I consider TP manipulation is the case of the Recipe: Light of Dwayna. The price for that had been in the range of 15-20 gold from Dec 2013 to Dec 2014. On Dec 19 2014 it had a supply of ~553 and a price of ~11 gold. Over the next 2 weeks the supply was steadily bought up till it dropped to about 60. The prices from that point increased over time to up to a max of 447 gold and have currently only dropped down to ~95 gold. Over a year later, prices and supply have never gone back to their original levels.

One or more people made a lot of gold by buying up supply and reselling for the new, higher prices.

https://www.gw2tp.com/item/49480-recipe-light-of-dwayna?full=1

In that case you could argue that all the supply listed at 15-20g was undervalued on the tp in the first place.

By the definition posted before, any interaction with the tp is a manipulation. ITs perfectly fine, if people buy listings on the tp, it doesnt matter for what value or in which volume, as long as buyer and seller agree on a price. The only malicious manipulation on the tp or the economy are insider trades, exploiting, botting and RMTs/ account hackers.

I think botting is quite under control and exploits are usually handled with a ban retroactively, even though they might do some damage to some markets. The worst offender are account hackers.
The amount of gold and mats duplicated through account restorations should have the biggest unintended impact on the economy.

In that case you could argue that all the supply listed at 15-20g was undervalued on the tp in the first place

No, I don’t think you can argue that because it’s supply and demand that determine price. Price was set at demand and 500plus supply. By buying up supply down to 60 items, it’s now demand and new lower TP supply = higher price. By buying up and holding on to the surplus of an item with limited, fixed supply and re-releasing it slowly so as not to flood the market at the new higher prices, then that’s manipulation to make the prices higher by artificially limiting supply.

But how do you determine, if the 500 supply on the tp was all the supply left in the game?

And the end result would be the same, wether someone bought out the 500 supply and sold them for 100g each over the next year or those 500 listings stayed on the tp and got bought by consumers over the next year. Once the supply is consumed, the price is 100g. And if that guy finds 500 people to buy his stock at 100g, i think its hard to argue that the listings prior to the buy out werent undervalued.

IF i would craft an item that costs 100g in mats 500 times and list all of them between 15-20g and then someone buys out all of them because he thinks they are listed under value, is it me or him manipulating the market?

Obviously no one thinks that the current supply in the TP is all there is. But someone can look at an item and see where new supply comes from and get a good idea if it’s an item with high, low, medium or no new incoming supply.

This item was a good risk for someone who wanted to corner a market as best he could and buy low and sell high. And he succeeded. That’s manipulation. If no one had done that and the the prices rose over time as supply dropped, that’s not manipulation because no one actively tried to get those prices higher.

And that’s the crux of this case. One or more people actively bought up the available TP supply of an item with low incoming supply and by those actions artificially increased the prices so that they could resell the items they bought at the new higher prices.

The crux of this case is that they thought that the item was undervalued at current prices and people are willing to pay more for it, while having no personal influence or knowledge about the supply outside the tp and wether new supply will be added to the market with a future update.

Yes, like I said. It was a risk. But he/they judged it was a good risk to buy up an item with limited supply and by those actions increase the price by removing and holding on to “excess” supply, so that prices quickly rose from approximately 15 gold to a max of over 400 gold. It’s manipulation when that happens as it’s keeping prices artificially high by limiting supply. They took the risk and won.

As too saying the lower prices were undervalued, you can say that about any price as all prices rise as supply decreases but demand doesn’t substantially decrease. The 400 gold price could be argued as undervalued as it would go up if supply went lower. Since all prices can be consider undervalued when compared to the prices they could be if supply was lower, that’s not a good argument. Not on an mmo where gold is not needed for survival and prices have no real upper limit.

Another question:

Someone (or some people) has just bought 12k Mystic Coins. Supply was 28k, now 16k.

Was it speculation or manipulation? (You can check its own thread here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Discussing-Mystic-Coins/first)

Edit: it was 15k and supply went from 31k to 16k.

laokoko.7403:

Ayrilana.1396:

TexZero.7910:

I too can play the link game with definitions

Market Manipulation

Look at that very first sentence and how it directly describes the exact situation.

It’s okay i know the crowd saying it’s all speculation will just come argue semantics. They are two sides of the same coin.

It doesn’t apply in this case as they were simply buying up supply to sell at a later point in time when the believe prices will rise. You can argue that it’s semantics but the differences are important.

believe means inside information, which isn’t speculate.

I think you mean guess the price will go up.

Maybe someone guess legendary armor or backpiece will use tones of leather.

Yeah. Guess is probably the better word for it rather than believe.

ekarat.1085:

Generally speaking, buying something because you think the price will go up is speculation, but if what you do has a large effect on the price that isn’t immediately washed out by other people, then it’s more manipulation, as you are the one driving up the price. Buying 1% of the supply is very different from buying 90% of the supply.

Then again, at some point it becomes pointless to argue over definitions. We don’t know intent — we just know that 90% of the supply vanished.

I think that intent should also be considered as well but that’s my opinion.

Yalora Istairiea.6287 – No its not market manipulation in both scenarios.
Milkshake.4038 – No its not market manipulation (mystic coins)

Both scenarios are speculation.

TPMN.1483:

With items such as recipe of lyssa / dwayna / grenth – (these luxury items) lets take this example and compare it to real life items.

AUG 15, 2014
A 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO became the most valuable car in the world selling for $38 million at the Bonham’s Auction in Carmel, California on Thursday. But the gavel price disappointed the Ferrari cognoscenti, who predicted that the car might bring as much as $60 million.

The Car was purchased for much less in 1962.

In theory it is impossible to compare speculation on luxury items compared to ordinary bulk commodities.

Yeah, i think we basically went back to discussing semantics again, me included. Usually, if someone uses the word manipulation on this forum, it sounds to me as if the user thinks whatever he is using that word for, is something to be concerned about.

If we check the OP, Milkshake didnt use that term and quite neutrally asked for other opinions on the buy out.

Personally, its a buy out i wouldnt do but i wont say right now that whoever did it, wont make any profit off it. I just wouldnt do it because i wouldnt put so much gold into one commodity that already is traded in a high volume (i would spend it on a high supply item with no demand atm). And then there is the small problem with relisting those 2.5m sections. You could refine them into squares, so you end up with 2500 stacks of those. But will you be able to list and sell them all during a potential short term spike? Hardly. In order to profit, the buyer needs a long term increase in price, which wouldnt be too much of a surprise, if you check the graphs for sections and squares.

Since the start of the year, squares went from 600k to under 50k listed and sections from 7.25m to 2.75m, while their prices more than doubled.

So unless Anet changes something in the next 8 weeks, i wouldnt bet against its price doubling again or at least go up at the same rate, so it would be 50%.

I checked daily trade volume on gw2bltc (which probably isnt accurate) and it suggests that around 40k squares and 190k sections have been traded on a daily basis, so 350k sections in total. Which means that whoever bought it out holds around a weeks worth of demand, which means it will take several more weeks (data suggests 4-5 weeks) to dump his supply on the tp, if he doesnt want to decrease prices again and just brings the supply/demand into equilibrium.

Writing this post made me realize that this buy out is smarter than i thought.
The buyer identified a supply wall (75-90% of total supply listed at lowest listing value*1.3 – I posted a screenshot about true listing volume (value listed in a range of 130% of the lowest listing) from gw2bltc, data not everybody might have access to because i think i have special filter unlocks for that site, in the gw2economy subreddit).

He then checked the past trading history and realized that supply has been rapidly dwindling since the start of the year and realized that this trend might continue for the next couple of weeks or months.

In the past, Anet was rather slow in reacting to rebalance common mats in my opinion, quartz took way longer than i expected, last year and i doubt that they will make mayor economical changes before the quarterly update mid April, they tend to ship those in bulk. Thats still 7 weeks away and there is a possibility that t5 leather might gain another 50-100% in value in that time, depending on updates Anet releases in the meantime. I doubt that demand will diminish in that time and supply will go either way. It will depend on where the masses will play. Obviously, the HoT zones and other lvl 80 maps are the biggest faucets for t5 leather, any update that will lead the player base away from those maps (pvp league) will mean less supply generated, if there are updates in those zones, we will get more.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

What I consider TP manipulation is the case of the Recipe: Light of Dwayna. The price for that had been in the range of 15-20 gold from Dec 2013 to Dec 2014. On Dec 19 2014 it had a supply of ~553 and a price of ~11 gold. Over the next 2 weeks the supply was steadily bought up till it dropped to about 60. The prices from that point increased over time to up to a max of 447 gold and have currently only dropped down to ~95 gold. Over a year later, prices and supply have never gone back to their original levels.

One or more people made a lot of gold by buying up supply and reselling for the new, higher prices.

https://www.gw2tp.com/item/49480-recipe-light-of-dwayna?full=1

In that case you could argue that all the supply listed at 15-20g was undervalued on the tp in the first place.

By the definition posted before, any interaction with the tp is a manipulation. ITs perfectly fine, if people buy listings on the tp, it doesnt matter for what value or in which volume, as long as buyer and seller agree on a price. The only malicious manipulation on the tp or the economy are insider trades, exploiting, botting and RMTs/ account hackers.

I think botting is quite under control and exploits are usually handled with a ban retroactively, even though they might do some damage to some markets. The worst offender are account hackers.
The amount of gold and mats duplicated through account restorations should have the biggest unintended impact on the economy.

In that case you could argue that all the supply listed at 15-20g was undervalued on the tp in the first place

No, I don’t think you can argue that because it’s supply and demand that determine price. Price was set at demand and 500plus supply. By buying up supply down to 60 items, it’s now demand and new lower TP supply = higher price. By buying up and holding on to the surplus of an item with limited, fixed supply and re-releasing it slowly so as not to flood the market at the new higher prices, then that’s manipulation to make the prices higher by artificially limiting supply.

But how do you determine, if the 500 supply on the tp was all the supply left in the game?

And the end result would be the same, wether someone bought out the 500 supply and sold them for 100g each over the next year or those 500 listings stayed on the tp and got bought by consumers over the next year. Once the supply is consumed, the price is 100g. And if that guy finds 500 people to buy his stock at 100g, i think its hard to argue that the listings prior to the buy out werent undervalued.

IF i would craft an item that costs 100g in mats 500 times and list all of them between 15-20g and then someone buys out all of them because he thinks they are listed under value, is it me or him manipulating the market?

Obviously no one thinks that the current supply in the TP is all there is. But someone can look at an item and see where new supply comes from and get a good idea if it’s an item with high, low, medium or no new incoming supply.

This item was a good risk for someone who wanted to corner a market as best he could and buy low and sell high. And he succeeded. That’s manipulation. If no one had done that and the the prices rose over time as supply dropped, that’s not manipulation because no one actively tried to get those prices higher.

And that’s the crux of this case. One or more people actively bought up the available TP supply of an item with low incoming supply and by those actions artificially increased the prices so that they could resell the items they bought at the new higher prices.

The crux of this case is that they thought that the item was undervalued at current prices and people are willing to pay more for it, while having no personal influence or knowledge about the supply outside the tp and wether new supply will be added to the market with a future update.

Yes, like I said. It was a risk. But he/they judged it was a good risk to buy up an item with limited supply and by those actions increase the price by removing and holding on to “excess” supply, so that prices quickly rose from approximately 15 gold to a max of over 400 gold. It’s manipulation when that happens as it’s keeping prices artificially high by limiting supply. They took the risk and won.

As too saying the lower prices were undervalued, you can say that about any price as all prices rise as supply decreases but demand doesn’t substantially decrease. The 400 gold price could be argued as undervalued as it would go up if supply went lower. Since all prices can be consider undervalued when compared to the prices they could be if supply was lower, that’s not a good argument. Not on an mmo where gold is not needed for survival and prices have no real upper limit.

I guess my main question is, if you think that this is something that Anet should control because it damages the overall health of the game or not. And if so, should they update (micromanage) faucets more regularly or restrict the tp in any way to make these kinds of buy outs/manipulation impossible?

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

What I consider TP manipulation is the case of the Recipe: Light of Dwayna. The price for that had been in the range of 15-20 gold from Dec 2013 to Dec 2014. On Dec 19 2014 it had a supply of ~553 and a price of ~11 gold. Over the next 2 weeks the supply was steadily bought up till it dropped to about 60. The prices from that point increased over time to up to a max of 447 gold and have currently only dropped down to ~95 gold. Over a year later, prices and supply have never gone back to their original levels.

One or more people made a lot of gold by buying up supply and reselling for the new, higher prices.

https://www.gw2tp.com/item/49480-recipe-light-of-dwayna?full=1

In that case you could argue that all the supply listed at 15-20g was undervalued on the tp in the first place.

By the definition posted before, any interaction with the tp is a manipulation. ITs perfectly fine, if people buy listings on the tp, it doesnt matter for what value or in which volume, as long as buyer and seller agree on a price. The only malicious manipulation on the tp or the economy are insider trades, exploiting, botting and RMTs/ account hackers.

I think botting is quite under control and exploits are usually handled with a ban retroactively, even though they might do some damage to some markets. The worst offender are account hackers.
The amount of gold and mats duplicated through account restorations should have the biggest unintended impact on the economy.

In that case you could argue that all the supply listed at 15-20g was undervalued on the tp in the first place

No, I don’t think you can argue that because it’s supply and demand that determine price. Price was set at demand and 500plus supply. By buying up supply down to 60 items, it’s now demand and new lower TP supply = higher price. By buying up and holding on to the surplus of an item with limited, fixed supply and re-releasing it slowly so as not to flood the market at the new higher prices, then that’s manipulation to make the prices higher by artificially limiting supply.

But how do you determine, if the 500 supply on the tp was all the supply left in the game?

And the end result would be the same, wether someone bought out the 500 supply and sold them for 100g each over the next year or those 500 listings stayed on the tp and got bought by consumers over the next year. Once the supply is consumed, the price is 100g. And if that guy finds 500 people to buy his stock at 100g, i think its hard to argue that the listings prior to the buy out werent undervalued.

IF i would craft an item that costs 100g in mats 500 times and list all of them between 15-20g and then someone buys out all of them because he thinks they are listed under value, is it me or him manipulating the market?

Obviously no one thinks that the current supply in the TP is all there is. But someone can look at an item and see where new supply comes from and get a good idea if it’s an item with high, low, medium or no new incoming supply.

This item was a good risk for someone who wanted to corner a market as best he could and buy low and sell high. And he succeeded. That’s manipulation. If no one had done that and the the prices rose over time as supply dropped, that’s not manipulation because no one actively tried to get those prices higher.

And that’s the crux of this case. One or more people actively bought up the available TP supply of an item with low incoming supply and by those actions artificially increased the prices so that they could resell the items they bought at the new higher prices.

The crux of this case is that they thought that the item was undervalued at current prices and people are willing to pay more for it, while having no personal influence or knowledge about the supply outside the tp and wether new supply will be added to the market with a future update.

Yes, like I said. It was a risk. But he/they judged it was a good risk to buy up an item with limited supply and by those actions increase the price by removing and holding on to “excess” supply, so that prices quickly rose from approximately 15 gold to a max of over 400 gold. It’s manipulation when that happens as it’s keeping prices artificially high by limiting supply. They took the risk and won.

As too saying the lower prices were undervalued, you can say that about any price as all prices rise as supply decreases but demand doesn’t substantially decrease. The 400 gold price could be argued as undervalued as it would go up if supply went lower. Since all prices can be consider undervalued when compared to the prices they could be if supply was lower, that’s not a good argument. Not on an mmo where gold is not needed for survival and prices have no real upper limit.

I guess my main question is, if you think that this is something that Anet should control because it damages the overall health of the game or not. And if so, should they update (micromanage) faucets more regularly or restrict the tp in any way to make these kinds of buy outs/manipulation impossible?

I’m saying it’s manipulation as it fits the circumstances and the definition but I’m not personally putting a moral judgement on it. It’s not real life and controlling supply in a computer game doesn’t have the consequences of controlling supply in real life.

As too whether or not ANet intervenes, it’s their game and their call. I don’t think they should directly intervene except to increase/decrease faucets and sinks as needed for the health of the game.

TPMN.1483:

Yalora Istairiea.6287 – No its not market manipulation in both scenarios.
Milkshake.4038 – No its not market manipulation (mystic coins)

Both scenarios are speculation.

Yep and thick leather is no problem because it’s farmable. Mystic coins on the other hand is just totally broken now.

Most likely next raid wing coming out, next part of legendary armor MAY come out as well.

Again, all speculation

This sort of thing happens a lot. I think it’s people like Wanze. It’s more likely to be a bot tho. You know there’s all manner of weird algorithms at work trying to fathom prices.

Masterwork (green) Berserker’s Cabalist Gloves went up to 30s 40s today. Mine sold at 9s each, I thought that was a lot!

Svarty.8019:

This sort of thing happens a lot. I think it’s people like Wanze. It’s more likely to be a bot tho. You know there’s all manner of weird algorithms at work trying to fathom prices.

Masterwork (green) Berserker’s Cabalist Gloves went up to 30s 40s today. Mine sold at 9s each, I thought that was a lot!

What that means is that someone bought them at a very high price (hard to say how much because there might have been a gap). It could have been a fat finger — I’ve accidentally bought 250 of something that I didn’t mean to once.

But it’s hard to see how that’s part of some plan to make money.

It seem fairly likely that multiple people have been watching leather decrease in supply for the last 3 months. Someone decided to make a large purchase, which probably triggered a run on the market, depleting a large part of the remaining supply.

This happens when supply gets below a certain point for almost all items. It happened recently with gemstones, and also with mystic coins. The increase in price always causes more people to list the item, or the speculator to relist the item immediately at a higher price, bringing the supply back up, but at a slightly higher price.

Rarely are these the workings of a single person. I don’t actually think it is possible for a single person to buy 2.5 million leather in 2 hours. I don’t think the TP loads fast enough.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Rarely are these the workings of a single person. I don’t actually think it is possible for a single person to buy 2.5 million leather in 2 hours. I don’t think the TP loads fast enough.

As long as there is enough supply listed at the same value and you dont have to adjust it, its definately possible with the right ping and binding your left click to mouse wheel or using an autoclicker.

After your first transaction, when the green screen with OK and CLOSE comes up, you can actually get lots of insta-buys in between hitting ok and then hitting buy instantly, which is at the same spot as the ok button, before the green screen comes up again.

I just made a trial with recipes for sigils of cleansing, which have plenty of supply at 2c. As i didnt want to buy thousands of recipes, i made instabuys for 1 each, while clicking away with left click bound to mouse wheel inbetween green screens. I saw the green purchase confirmation only 3 times, yet i bought 200+ sigils and it took not more than 10 seconds. 200 stacks are 50k items. It definately creates some lag, so lets say you need a minute instead of 10 seconds. But even at that pace, it would only take 50 min to buy 2.5m items/10k stacks.

Yup- it’s possible to buy quickly….
Now the interesting thing is how long would it take to relist them?

The ‘you have listed too many’ is a fun story…
Any math on how long it would take to sell2.5 Million ?

Or a Million?

probably doesn’t matter as long as you have an autoclick mouse.

that is if you don’t mind breaking the rule.

TPMN.1483:

Yup- it’s possible to buy quickly….
Now the interesting thing is how long would it take to relist them?

The ‘you have listed too many’ is a fun story…
Any math on how long it would take to sell2.5 Million ?

Or a Million?

At 10 sales per minute it would be 1000 minutes, so 16 hours and 40 min.

And 4 hours and 10 minutes, if you refine them first.

laokoko.7403:

probably doesn’t matter as long as you have an autoclick mouse.

that is if you don’t mind breaking the rule.

but you can only sell whats in your bags, so you can just sell 160 stacks max, while having an autoclicker set up.

Wanze.8410:

laokoko.7403:

probably doesn’t matter as long as you have an autoclick mouse.

that is if you don’t mind breaking the rule.

but you can only sell whats in your bags, so you can just sell 160 stacks max, while having an autoclicker set up.

if that’s painful. just imagine how painfull it is selling 10 stack and you have to wait.

That’s a lot of stacks… And inventory space

I know I’ll get barked at by the TP hounds but, JS should have had mechanisms in place to curtail high volume trading from launch. Just having a storage capacity limit on the TP would have been enough. Forcing a player to take physical ownership of items purchased would have limited high volume trading.