Market Discussions

Since the other one got locked:

So, what's going on with the melted nano prices? Consensus in SCC (thanks Brock) was that the basic cause was the much easier scanning mechanics making wormholes more accessible to day trippers. That sounds reasonable to me but I'd certainly like to hear other views.

At the same time in the last ten days or so there has been some pretty heavy downwards manipulation to help the trend along.

The big question, it seems to me, is how much of the downwards pressure is natural and where we can expect the bottom of the market to be? Will it spring back up to the 4.5mil mark when the pressure is taken off or does it have further to fall?

The low so far has been at the 3.4mil mark although lots of people have been leaping in at that level to buy up stock. My personal suspicion is that it will be heading back up a bit naturally in the next month or so, at least a bit and that if it has been manipulated down we might see a hard push up once the manipulators are happy with the stockpiles they have built up.

Disclosure: I was sitting on a small pile but I have cashed it out to focus on active trading so my interest now is purely academic as I'm just trading the margin. Still, I would like more insight into this as it's a market I have been following since my second week in eve (I got my start in trading running ribbons up from Amarr to Jita and making 500k-1mil per unit hauling in a frigate - good times).

Edit - Just to add why I think it's being manipulated down:

a) the big blocking order at 4.5mil that appears to have no intention of selling and dwarfs the normal order size.

b) a very unusual number of large sell orders (500-1.5k) which just aren't seen in the normal operation of the market due to most buyers buying to build T3 rather than trade.

c)Lots of very small orders which also seem to have no interest in getting themselves sold but which create the illusion of downwards pressure by lengthening the sell order list.

d) A very unusual number of orders with short expiry dates (many of which expired without selling). I'm not quite sure what the purpose of these short lengths is but I do remember them as being a standard feature of the regular manipulations of technetium that went on in the first 18 months of the tech boom.

Oh and also, I don't think WH daytrippers contribute all that many MNRs to the economy. The people running capital escalations in locked-down C5s/C6s are responsible for most production.

The absence of any WH evictions of note is what I referred to as 'wormhole peace'.

Let's not forget the fact that CCP has disabled the use of T3s in highsec plexes. Along with the Marauder changes, T3s are no longer viable mission runners/plexers, which leads to a drastic decrease in demand.

Setsune nailed it. Wormhole space, from my point of view, has been a lot busier lately in term of population. More people running sites equals more MNR out there. Coupled with the null meta shifting away from the huge T3 fleets and changes in other ships, you have a bigger supply and much less demand.

It's more that a good number of players that might previously have used a strategic cruiser are using Ishtars instead.

Mission runner demand for hulls isn't all that large - they don't lose many ships and they usually only keep one or two hulls at a time. Nullsec ratting demand is higher - even though less people participate in 0.0 ratting, they lose more ships.

If something is forcing you to dabble in PVE, use a battleship. They scale much less with player skill and perform better when piloted badly than a HAC or T3 or command ship.

I'm not sure unit turnover correlates all that strongly with end user demand. Look at tech 2 ammunition turnover - the actual use of ammunition (end user demand) is probably fairly constant in busy highsec regions at least, but spikes of turnover occur when a producer dumps an enormous stock on the market, or a market speculator or manipulator buys an enormous amount at one time.

I know I personally have caused the biggest spike in Null S in the last 12 months in Sinq Laison in a failed market manipulation, and two of the other spikes in smaller, more successful ones, and each time my purchases were utterly unrelated to underlying user demand.

(I'm also considering trying to crash a regional ammunition market as an experiment, not so much for potential profit as much as it is a learning experiment).

Sabriz makes a good point about potential fluctuations in t3 production, but I think the real story is changing patterns of t3 use. Certainly less people are graduating to t3's than before as they have disappeared from hisec exploration, and are less popular than they historically have been for missions. T3s are also less popular for nullsec ratting than they have been historically. But I doubt these people are turning around and actually selling their t3s. I think the real culprit is the t3's disappearance as a main-line fleet ship.

This.

Remember when Alloyed Tritanium Bars were worth something? I'd hate to be sitting on five thousand of those now.

Looks like 3.4 was at least the temporary bottom of the market. Back up to c. 4mil now. I'm still having difficulties working out the 'natural' price though, as there is hard manipulation going on in both directions and manipulation trends have always been beyond my ken

I haven't jumped into the Nano Ribbon Bonanza yet, but I can say that it is affecting the T3 market to glorious instability, and thus profits.