Market Discussions

It's the Invisible Hand.

Just an FWI.

Hats made out of tinfoil are completely noneffective.

In reality they track you based off of the electromagnetic signature of your kidneys.

So for any protection you should wrap tin-foil ( lead foil would be more effective ) around your entire waist and lower back

I'll just put it out there. I absolutely think it's too far out to think that CCP is dumping stacks of PLEX onto the market.

CCP PLEX manipulation is in the form of PLEX sales. I think most of us underestimate the number of players willing to buy a stack of 12 plex for a 10% discount or whatever CCP offers for these things. Massive amounts of PLEX enters the system when these sales fire off. Add to that the reinvigorated bot bannings, and high sec mission income nerf, and PLEX price seems to be stabilized.

Of course, if someone (goons) were to come in and spike the price again, I'd welcome it I mean, once this PLEX sale is over, CCP is out of the picture for another 6 months or so.

PLEX being on sale pretty much nonstop since Xmas is the reason. I think CCP knows exactly how many subscriptions they gain or lose when PLEX prices hit 500M, 515M, 550M, etc. so they are going to keep the sales coming for Fanfest, Patch Day Sale, summer fun, back to school or whatever reason they need to so that prices stay about where they are now.

The reason plex have fallen since october is almost certainly that they removed or at least forced underground the "faucet" (and I put that in quotes because I mean it in a figurative sense of 'holy **** all the isk' not the usual 'adding new isk to the game' sense) that was Faction Warfare, combined with fairly relentless pressure in the form of sales every couple of weeks.

They have the PLEX confiscated from banned accounts to use in the manner that you describe, but every time they've ever talked about it it always seems to be a sort of "last ditch" thing, and they prefer to use other means (sales and plex consuming offers) as their primary regulatory tool.

Like I said, the existence of them doesn't automatically mean they're using them that way.



This is why I put faucet in quotes. Yes, it was a sink. No, that doesn't matter. There were and still are plenty of other faucets and liquid isk around. What matters when evaluating how an income source might impact prices seems to be a) how big the income is relative to other options b) how accessible it is compared to other options c) how much effort it takes compared to other options and to some degree. FW was a) high (in the case of button orbiting) or off the charts (in the case of mission farming) b) accessible (missions) to extremely accessible (button orbiting) c) very low effort (button orbiting) to "not much more effort than regular l4 missions" in the case of mission farming. Basically, it was a perfect storm. There's a reason why the start and end of the plex spike coincided with the introduction and subsequent nerf of FW.

i like how every change in plex prices is rationalized with CCP interference. it's like schroedinger's cat: CCP wants PLEX to be cheap and expensive at the same time.

There was a PLEX injection by CCP of 'confiscated PLEX' last year. Dr E promised a DEV blog about it in the CSM summit notes in last Janruary and there it'll all be explained after Dr E jumps in his time machine & posts this ninja DEV Blog

So maybe he'll talk about it in fanfest or maybe he'll promise a DEV blog about it comming out Soon(tm) at fanfest & it'll get published next year

There's no recent proof of CCP PLEX manipulation.

These actions require a very slow, steady and cunning approach to not leave an easily spotted track.

I have analyzed PLEX in this post, look at how smooth the price is.

The only potent market action happened with that clearly identified November inversion pin bar.

How do I know it's not been CCP? Because in all markets (including RL) inversion pin bars often immediately invert the market direction but in this case it only half succeeded. This happens when sellers are definitely there but not so powerful to dominate the market, a direct manipulation made by who knows the required volume to invert the trend, would have produced a more predictable inversion. This one, instead, created the so called "inversion with inside range market" pin bar and actually produced a double top in December, like there really was a slow and steady sellers victory, not a "huge nuke dump" or similar, that's typical of manipulations (and even more, state central banks currency control method).

I could go on and explain further, but writing in the middle of the ocean is not so comfortable (so, yes, guys thank Neptune for keeping me in check! )

Well stability means less people going "OMG DUMP BEFORE IT GOES LOW!!" or "OMG BUY PLEX BEFORE IT GOES HIGH AGAIN!" and to just be willing to buy PLEX from market as and when they need it, which then introduces further stability into the PLEX market as we don't have these massive positive-feedback swings.