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Recent price volatility

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Asheava
Darwinbots
#1 - 2014-08-26 18:53:27 UTC
I stopped playing for around 6 months and then started again recently after Crius. I notice that mineral prices and PLEX costs are much higher. PLEX especially is interesting, since I think that was holding pretty steady at ~500m/PLEX for a while, and not it seems to have jumped 30-50% suddenly.

As a purely academic curiosity, what's going on?

The knee jerk (and wrong) reaction would be that Crius is mucking everything up. But since the total money supply in the game shouldn't be changed by industry changes, it shouldn't be causing inflation. For the minerals, I think it can be explained, at least in part, by the normal summer spike of players. For the PLEXes, I'm guessing maybe people switched their long term investments from minerals to PLEXes given the uncertainty around the industry changes? In general, uncertainty tends to cause people to take a "hold and wait" approach, so maybe some of the big players withdrawing from the economy for a while is causing the changes?

Obviously that's not a very big data set. I can't remember any other prices from before I stopped playing though.

Anyone have any other ideas/information? Maybe fewer PLEXes are in circulation now, for whatever reason? I know CCP sometimes posts economic data to their dev blog, and I'm guessing they're working on one for Crius. Until then, is their CPI index available to look at anywhere? Any other data I can look at?

On the practical side, if you were going to disappear for months/a year, what would you put your money in to preserve value/possibly earn a profit right now? I would have said PLEX six months ago, but the massive price jump right now has my investment monkey-brain screaming "bubble".
okoolos rimmer
Napkin Nation
#2 - 2014-08-26 23:00:34 UTC
Time for another plex thread. Is it that time of the moon again?
Ocih
Space Mermaids
#3 - 2014-08-27 07:15:29 UTC
There was also a time PEX was 200 mill.

It will continue to climb, it's the only real in game item that is associated to money.

Everything else is judged by its mineral value and that's the volatility aspect. I expect to see less and less items in the game and more minerals as time goes by. The changes to reproc were a huge game changer. Niche markets are going to go the way of the Dodo. The margin for error in manufacturing is now too great to make risky ventures.
Vaako Omaristos
Doomheim
#4 - 2014-08-27 11:52:57 UTC
Plex is going to be a stable price because of the monetary value it has. Everything the eve fluctuates due to demand but eventually it levels out.

Trader, industrialist and thinker. Follow my progress on my 141 trading challenge here
Steve Ronuken
Fuzzwork Enterprises
Vote Steve Ronuken for CSM
#5 - 2014-08-27 16:35:55 UTC
https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/market/marketdisplay.php

Funny thing is: Over the last year, the rise in plex prices has been pretty stable.

July spiked up, but it's dropped back down to the trend line, which follows, close enough, the price for the year.

Woo! CSM XI!

Fuzzwork Enterprises

Twitter: @fuzzysteve on Twitter
Airto TLA
Acorn's Wonder Bars
#6 - 2014-08-27 16:52:10 UTC
Most price fluctuations are due to Crisus mucking with the whole equation that is industry.

Plex is based on a whole different equation, it is based on the real world value of time and the ability of accounts to make isk.

So if the average account makes 50 Mil isk per hour and the average person is willing to trade 16 hours of money making activity (that they may enjoy doing) for game time it works out to 800 million, On the offset there is a person willing to avoid the 16 hours and buy more stuff with their real world cash, since they ONLY want to PVP.

The whole thing is hard to predict, since it depends on the amount of peace in null (low risk/macroed anomalies), the value of incursion fleets, the current state of ship reimbursement plans (if I do not need to grind for ships some will not sell plex to avoid it), the wage base of game players, the free time of the players, etc.

The long term trend is up, my guess would be since more players of an ability to make more isk and Eve is attracting fewer players willing to pay to win as time goes on.
Sabriz Adoudel
Move along there is nothing here
#7 - 2014-08-27 23:39:25 UTC
Steve Ronuken wrote:
https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/market/marketdisplay.php

Funny thing is: Over the last year, the rise in plex prices has been pretty stable.

July spiked up, but it's dropped back down to the trend line, which follows, close enough, the price for the year.



That spike was Power of Two in action, nothing more.

One individual 'invested' a little over a half a trillion ISK in creating hundreds of Power of Two accounts for the purpose of training characters for future sale. I'm sure there were many others doing the same (on a small scale) using 3 PLEX to create a six-month trained off-account alt.

I support the New Order and CODE. alliance. www.minerbumping.com
Asheava
Darwinbots
#8 - 2014-08-28 17:42:15 UTC
Oh, I hadn't realized PLEX had been on a steady, consistent rise. Actually, that graph shows something else interesting, too: the volume of PLEX being traded hasn't really changed. Normally, when the price of something goes up, I'd expect to see either the volume go down (that is, the supply curve shifted back) or the volume go up (the demand curve shifted forward), or the supply of money going up (that is, general inflation).

General inflation doesn't seem to be the case. The price of most minerals seemed mostly flat when I checked their history over the last year. I didn't do a super formal calculation or anything, but it definitely seems inflation doesn't match the PLEX price changes. Maybe the demand curve is just really, really flat (that is, demand is really inelastic). Then a shift in the supply curve would cause a general price increase without changing the volume traded. That makes a certain amount of sense: I'm sure people have alts they can't afford to (or are unwilling to, because, you know, spouses can be so judgy) pay with IRL cash. Of course, I'm just approaching this with my macro/micro economics supply demand curves. I'm sure there are better models to use.

Assuming it's a change in the supply, begs the question: what's changed, and why is it changing so steadily?
Tau Cabalander
Retirement Retreat
Working Stiffs
#9 - 2014-08-28 22:59:03 UTC
The longer EVE is around, the higher prices will climb as wealth is accumulated.