Market Report - hitting new lows (yeah, that's a repeated title)
Wilhem Klink
The market slides to new lows and new highs. Not all of them are good.
Raw material prices hold again. Whereas yesterday the world-wide pressure on weapon raws would predict a .01cc decrease, that did not happen. The eUSA market was able to absorb every cheap offer and bounce back to .07. One might find .06 offers on weapon raw materials, but they won't last. Likewise with food raw material. World-wide the pressure to go to .05 seems to have abated (few offers of .05 last and they are not significant in size). Its always possible to drop .01 on either, but the market is too big for one-offs offers to do so. The Raw Material Index holds at 28.89.
Food prices slump at all levels except Q1 which rises. The Food Index drops to a record low of 69.78.
The Weapon Index likewise hits a record low, slipping to 70.55 as prices slipped across the board with only Q1 holding steady.
Wages hit a post-Day 1600 high pushing the Wage Index up to 104.07.
Gold rises again marking the 8th consecutive day of rising or steady gold prices. The Gold Index moves to 125.18.
The Index:
The 1600 AU Index
Based off of the amount of gold a player could earn in a year by working at market wage, selling 20 weapons, 200 food (both Q6) and 1750 raw materials (split 50/50 food/weapons) the 1600 AU Index drops for the 7th straight day. The index falls to 253.66 as market prices soften and gold increases in value.
Its been a rough week. Over the last 7 days gold's increased in value 3.5%,
raw materials dropped almost 28%, food prices dropped 11%, weapon prices declines 8% and wages bumped up 0.66%. The amount of gold a player could have bought in a year by selling 20 weapons, 200 food (both Q6) and 1750 raw materials (split 50/50 food/weapons) fell by 9.9%.
Looking at prices relative to Day 1600 by quality we see Q6 weapons still holding away from the pack.
For food, its the other end as Q1 moves back out in front.
Note: prices are reflective of a percentage of Day 1600's price (Hence the "1600 Index"). In other words if an index is quoted at 88, that days price is 88% of the price on Day 1600. Except the 1600 AU Index which represents an amount of gold one can buy given market conditions as noted in that section.
Methodology on prices: prices are taken at 3:00 eRep time. The price is the average price of buying 1,000 Raw materials, 500 Food, 100 weapons (at each quality level), and 8 gold, plus the market wage less any fraction of cc (so 240, rather than 240.1). All qualities are standardized to Q1 (per hit or per health).
Sic transit gloria mundi
Comments
fine
ADIMNS: FIX TEH ECONOMY!
its not just the admins fault. undercutting and impatience play a role too.
everyday i produce a pile of items and always put them on sale at higher than the minimum price. the next day when i go to sell again about half have sold. i adjust and repeat. always everything eventually sells yet never posted at lowest price.
people that come in and see 10 offers at 5.99 and then chose to sell at 5.80 are playing a part in the decline.
blah blah blah, there is no econ mod for this game any longer. It has always been to easy to make products and all they have done is make it easier and cheaper to have companies. supply obviously far out weighs demand at this point and with the fact that you can make everything you need for yourself there is not much point in even having a market once you get to a certain point in the game. In fact I could not tell ypou what things sell for I never go there.
it has to be easy. for every 1 player that understands economics and has patience there are 10 or 20 little whiny impatient players that want everything to fall into their laps today. part of the admins struggle is balancing skill and simplicity with their own profit motive.
at the end of the day skilled patient players are not putting food on the table so admins bow to the requests of the impatient masses of idiots....
Someone is not paying attention to the price of production. The markets are severely flooded with raw materials hence the very low price with wages being paid at a rate which is counterproductive to anyone except the owners of level 5 or 6 establishments. As example: A level 3 arms establishment in the USA will produce 60 units using 1800 units of raw, assuming 3 hired workers. Cost of raw: 126US cost of wages 924US total: 1050 US. break even 17.50US.. Market price 11.38US A loss before taxes.
I would never suggest any actions in restraint of trade, but I am not beneath it. We can always withhold our products from the market, never selling at less than an agreed minimum. This worked well enough in the market of Italy, but there were fewer players posting their products. I could export to Bolivia, I hold a license, but I see no point, I would need to post the price blindly. I am unaware of a way left to calculate the currency. The job market needs to collapse. That would help.
I suggest that the flood in the RM market is due to the concept that the majority of the players are now mature. There is a lack of newbie players in need of buying items in the market, therefore, there is lower overall demand. I suspect the market is functioning as a true free market most. Too much supply or glut = lower prices. One possible solution is to create a super glut which might drive down wages.
So, I have embarked on a little experiment. I will be buying 200,000 or so units of Food RM, selling them at a loss. See if I can clear up some of the backlog.
Owners of Q6 companies have a long way to go before they lose money when hiring workers. Given the market price of a Q6 food or weapon, wages, and raw materials, Q6 owners are banging over $100 per worker (food) & 150 per worker weapon. Wages would have to rise $85 before Q6 food employers ran tight on profit. Q6 weapons can still make decent money even if wages rose $120.
Well, that cost me a bit, but cleared up 8 or 9 pages of ,06 offers.