Market Discussions

Sometimes it's useful to know where items come from to understand these movements.

Factional Warfare for example: The winning side will generate tons of Loyality Points and spend them in their LP store. That's one of the reasons why the price for Datacores is moving between "thresholds". Each faction LP store only offers a subset of Datacores. For example:

Minmatar: Hydromagnetic Physics, Molecular Engineering, Nuclear Physics, Minmatar Starship Engineering
Amarr: High Energy Physics, Laser Physics, Nanite Engineering, Amarrian Starship Engineering

There are some other sources for Datacores, like R&D agents and Exploration, but I think most Datacores are bought from FW LP store.

Last year, the Minmatar faction lost most of their systems to Amarr. Prices for Minmatar Datacores went up and Amarrian Datacores flooded into the market, driving prices down. Same for other FW LP goods, like Hurricane Fleet Issue, Vexor Navy Issue and so on.

It's a common rule of thumb that one LP should at least yield 1000 ISK to be worthwhile. This threshold might differ from person to person, like 1500 ISK/LP or 2000 ISK/LP.

At some point in time, the value for LP will drop below these threshold, making FW no longer wortwhile (from the ISK perspective). I've heard the rumor that most FW pilots have multiple accounts to maximize their income by switching sides at will, making FW just another grind for ISK.

Other movements might follow the same pattern, like Planetary stuff. If prices for Transmitters are high, PI producers might switch their planets to produce Transmitters. With some delay the market demand will be satisfied and prices drop until the producers switch back again.

I think it's possible to utilize these movements by stockpiling, but you will need huge amounts of ISK for this and you might need to wait months and months for prices to turn.

And don't forget about CCP changing things like drop rates (see Machariel!) or mining yields, with heavy impact on prices. And also: Inflation. ISK is generated all the time, increasing the total amount of ISK without end. Some people use rare items or PLEX as a sort of "Gold" to protect their wealth against this.

Yeah, I've figured out such things. For instance, I'm in FW myself so this is a subject that I know quite well

This kind of knowledge is really helpful and that's why I'm trying to stay fresh on patches, but also null war coming and fit used in doctrine, or FOTM ships and modules.

But there are some items that I think it would be possible to tell only "from the curves" if prices are going up or down.

For instance, if you take an item that is mass produced in high and all null. You know its production won't be really influenced by null wars and such and chances of hard shortages are really low. Additionaly, this item is used to produce a lot of various things, ships of every size / races, modules of any kind / tech level, so there's always going to be a need of it, so no mass oversupply

Then if you have such an item the only mechanics driving his price is what you described with transmitters, and speculation. Then, there must be a pattern that you probably could analyze and use with enough confidence to tell where the prices are going for this item.

But for this I would need some older market data. I don't know if through eve central or something like that you can get such data ?