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Is this an example of a manipulation? How do you identify one?

Author
Casey Maulerant
Big Nasty Bullies Inc.
#1 - 2016-02-16 11:56:21 UTC
In Dodixie the sell price of Internal Force Field Array I dropped from around 9 mil on Saturday to around 7.1mil today (and all of yesterday - it started happening on the Sunday). According to the graph they've been pretty stable for the year up to this point, with several similar dips (sorry I can't give specifics, server's down - I seem to remember one very similar (almost identical) dip around (possibly) 7-8 months ago).

My main question then is: is someone manipulating this or is this simply an increase in supply? Secondly, and more importantly really, is there any good "way" to differentiate between when the price is simply falling, and someone is forcing them down? I thought before hand I'd be able to identify one based on a spike in volume but as I watched the price fall on these I realised that a lot of the spike could be attributed to old buy orders filling up as people try to get out quickly as the price drops (thus, both manipulations and price adjustments(?) will be marked by increased volume).

It should be pretty obvious from this post I'm pretty far from a big time trader (or even a small time trader for that matter - I've played a total of about 2 months); even the idea that someone would try to manipulate these in the first place might seem ludicrous to you. I also have no idea about the production of these things (nor the production of pretty much anything else, for that matter); there may be a blatantly obvious reason as to why this happened. To add to this, I'm also unaware of the prices in other hubs. I asked in local chat and aside from all the griefing I got a link to some future patch notes that supposedly affected the item (I think - I can't find the link any more) though given my naivety it read about as well as hieroglyphics.

The rapid way in which they declined though struck me as unusual and I wondered (read: hoped) if anyone could confirm my suspicion. I doubt it myself as I haven't seen any large buy orders go in at the new low, and no one particular trader was both buying and selling to my orders in any great quantity.

In the interest of full disclosure: obviously I took a big old punt and bought loads of stock as the price dropped and it doesn't look like it's going anywhere soon so I'm sitting on a great big pile of these things now - by all means feel free to pump the price on these if you can and take this liability of my hands.

In all seriousness, any information on manipulation would be very interesting. I googled around but didn't find much other than what I already suspected, so I wondered if anyone with extensive dealings with the market could give me some info on the subject.

TL;DR Was this an instance of manipulation, and how do you identify manipulations?
Cista2
EVE Museum
#2 - 2016-02-16 12:15:26 UTC
Sometimes a manipulation can be identified by the same person setting up a series of orders with different prices. Look for orders that are made within a few minutes and with prices systematically spaced out (not 0.01 isking).

My channel: "Signatures" -

Casey Maulerant
Big Nasty Bullies Inc.
#3 - 2016-02-16 12:27:51 UTC
That makes sense - had a look but any evidence in this instance would be gone by now, I suppose you have to catch it while its happening before any changes can be made to the orders - I'll keep my eyes open next time though, thanks.
Kithran
#4 - 2016-02-16 12:33:46 UTC
In this case its not market manipulation - check the thread on upcoming changes to damage control modules....
Casey Maulerant
Big Nasty Bullies Inc.
#5 - 2016-02-16 13:10:54 UTC
Had another look (this is what I was directed to in local chat) and I get it a bit more now - they're nerfing them so they're no longer "must have" modules? What does this mean for the price then? Permanently wrecked?
Casey Maulerant
Big Nasty Bullies Inc.
#6 - 2016-02-16 13:19:46 UTC
Sorry, very tired. Of course it means they are wrecked ignore my post. Flogged half of em to the remaining sell orders. You win some, you lose some. Just a question on this though, could you sort of reverse speculate on something in a situation like this? i.e. drive the price down (further) with perception being that they are useless, then sell when they return to, if not pre-patch levels, better than the price you bought them for? Anyone ever done something similar to this?
Aptenodytes
Reckless Abandon
#7 - 2016-02-16 14:47:23 UTC
Absolutely. I bought around 1500 Slicers when they were 9 mil each. Big smile

Sold them when the price hit 12m. Wish my nerve had held a bit longer Roll
Avi Shekelstien
Doomheim
#8 - 2016-02-16 15:59:05 UTC
There are things I can manufacture that make me a profit selling at the buy price. Sometimes I like to be a douche and see how far I can get the sell price before the 0.01 crowd lose their nerve.
Casey Maulerant
Big Nasty Bullies Inc.
#9 - 2016-02-16 17:03:27 UTC

Quote:
Absolutely. I bought around 1500 Slicers when they were 9 mil each.

Sold them when the price hit 12m. Wish my nerve had held a bit longer


What % of your NAV do you usually use to speculate? Do you have a maximum percentage that you'll go to?
Sabriz Adoudel
Move along there is nothing here
#10 - 2016-02-17 00:29:14 UTC
Hi, that was me.

I was the person with the highest regionwide buy order on that item in Sinq Laison (7.7 million per unit, 125 units regionwide IIRC, plus a buy order in Dodi 9-20 station as well on top of that). I'd been trading it a good deal.

As soon as I saw the tiericide announcement, I pulled my buy order and dumped all my stock onto other people's buy orders.

If you took a bullet for me by being the person I sold them to, thank you. Those will be 3m within 6 weeks.

I support the New Order and CODE. alliance. www.minerbumping.com

Sabriz Adoudel
Move along there is nothing here
#11 - 2016-02-17 00:32:57 UTC
Cista2 wrote:
Sometimes a manipulation can be identified by the same person setting up a series of orders with different prices. Look for orders that are made within a few minutes and with prices systematically spaced out (not 0.01 isking).



When I want to manipulate a price down, I do something different.

Day 1 I place a very competitive regionwide buy order. Just a little below the top hub buy order, sometimes even 0.01 ISKing it.

Day 3-4 I check stock. If I have stock in 20 or more different stations, I cancel my regionwide order, then set up a buy order in the hub at my target price, and then list every single one of my items as separate orders where they are 0.01 ISK above my new buy order.



You'll see me do this from time to time on decryptors in particular. If ever you see 30 different sell orders in the Sinq Laison region for a specific decryptor at the same price but in different stations, it's me doing it.

I support the New Order and CODE. alliance. www.minerbumping.com

Adunh Slavy
#12 - 2016-02-17 03:20:37 UTC
Sabriz Adoudel wrote:


If you took a bullet for me by being the person I sold them to, thank you. Those will be 3m within 6 weeks.


And this boys and girls is why either, you read every little Eve snipet you can get, or stick to basic raw materials.

Don't play the markets you don't know.

Well played, Sabriz

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.  - William Pitt

Sabriz Adoudel
Move along there is nothing here
#13 - 2016-02-17 12:14:52 UTC
Adunh Slavy wrote:
Sabriz Adoudel wrote:


If you took a bullet for me by being the person I sold them to, thank you. Those will be 3m within 6 weeks.


And this boys and girls is why either, you read every little Eve snipet you can get, or stick to basic raw materials.

Don't play the markets you don't know.

Well played, Sabriz



OP made no mistakes, he/she/it made a low risk investment. Low risk is not zero risk, and this is an important lesson to learn.

I've watched meta 4 modules like a hawk since Tiericide started, and dropped out of the web and scram markets but kept in the damage control one because it was so damn lucrative. (Also dropped out of the light neutron blaster market but that was increased competition not Tiericide concerns).

I had my exit plan for this day.

OP can probably extract with only a 15% loss. (I took a 1% loss on my stock).

I support the New Order and CODE. alliance. www.minerbumping.com

Casey Maulerant
Big Nasty Bullies Inc.
#14 - 2016-02-17 20:45:11 UTC
That's really cool knowing how it went down, it's nice to be vindicated in my first instinct as well - thanks for posting. You're right, exit wasn't too painful and definitely worth it for, as you say, the valuable lessons learned.
minumin
Corellian Trading Corporation
#15 - 2016-02-17 21:54:45 UTC
OP you can check other markets with this, quite handy if you don''t have alts in different regions
https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/market/link/10000002/5839
Droidster
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#16 - 2016-02-17 22:44:04 UTC
When theorizing about the market, the important thing is to understand exactly what might be happening.

So, in your case, you are theorizing that someone is selling a lot of a commodity (by putting up sell orders?) to "force the price down". And why would this be? So they could buy them again? Ugh

If a bunch of sell orders appear, we can assume:

* A person either has built a lot of something, OR
* They acquired a lot of things somehow (corp theft?) OR
* They had those things stashed away and they want to get rid of them (maybe because they think the price will decrease in the future)

AND

* The person is not satisfied with the buy orders, and wants to sell into the market

The spread on these items is relatively small, so it is a tight market. If the seller is willing to post a sell order at 7.3M just so he can make an extra 300K over the 7M buy price, that indicates a pretty high volume market.
Casey Maulerant
Big Nasty Bullies Inc.
#17 - 2016-02-17 23:13:04 UTC
Quote:

OP you can check other markets with this, quite handy if you don''t have alts in different regions
https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/market/link/10000002/5839


Thanks for the tip.

Quote:

So, in your case, you are theorizing that someone is selling a lot of a commodity (by putting up sell orders?) to "force the price down". And why would this be? So they could buy them again?


My thinking was roughly, they'd want to force the price down to then buy more at a low price, allow the market to return to normal, and then sell the stock they acquired at the low buy price, making a profit. So yes they'd sell a lot of a commodity by putting up low priced sell orders to force the price down to then equivalently lower the buy price, but they'd end up selling less of the commodity at at the lower sell price than they'd buy at the lower buy price.

Thus, the sell orders appear because they had them stashed away, bought at the normal price on buy orders most likely, to be used to do this.
Sabriz Adoudel
Move along there is nothing here
#18 - 2016-02-17 23:25:55 UTC
Droidster wrote:
When theorizing about the market, the important thing is to understand exactly what might be happening.

So, in your case, you are theorizing that someone is selling a lot of a commodity (by putting up sell orders?) to "force the price down". And why would this be? So they could buy them again? Ugh

If a bunch of sell orders appear, we can assume:

* A person either has built a lot of something, OR
* They acquired a lot of things somehow (corp theft?) OR
* They had those things stashed away and they want to get rid of them (maybe because they think the price will decrease in the future)

AND

* The person is not satisfied with the buy orders, and wants to sell into the market

The spread on these items is relatively small, so it is a tight market. If the seller is willing to post a sell order at 7.3M just so he can make an extra 300K over the 7M buy price, that indicates a pretty high volume market.



I push prices down on certain items quite often. Hell, I keep a stash of decryptors deliberately in Rancer to use for this purpose - noone really wants to buy them, but they come up as the lowest order in the region.

Each time it's a prelude to a big buyup. Anyone undercuts the Rancer order, I buy their entire stock.

Works better with items you want to source cheaply for personal/alliance use and is less effective on items you want to resell (as sometimes the price drop remains for some time).

I support the New Order and CODE. alliance. www.minerbumping.com

Casey Maulerant
Big Nasty Bullies Inc.
#19 - 2016-03-05 01:15:46 UTC
Sorry to necro this but prices nearly fully recovered - probably could have fed them in slow and got away with a profit (though I'm not sure how many you had). What do you think after the fact?
Rhivre
TarNec
Invisible Exchequer
#20 - 2016-03-05 12:34:47 UTC
Casey Maulerant wrote:
Sorry to necro this but prices nearly fully recovered - probably could have fed them in slow and got away with a profit (though I'm not sure how many you had). What do you think after the fact?



Prices are still very down.
Internal Force Field Array

The patch Tuesday will probably cause a bit of a slump as well, because people might not have realised about tiericide yet (ok, thats not a might, its a definite that they didnt realise)
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