Market Discussions

after reading on and off, most of the commentors and the OP have very bad understanding of market mechanics.
What you are seeing is "PLEX", just one item seperated from the market.

Now, let's play real economics:

in real life, currency is degraded by what you may know as inflation.
That means prices rise when demand exceeds supply, this happens to enable the market to heal itself.
A healed market means that the amount of items being put up for sale and the amount of items people want to buy are the same.

Ignoring the reason as to why prices have risen(Many factors at that), Here's a short price list

Prices are 1/10/11 and 1/02/12 essence market, averages.

Tritanium : 3.3 to 3.81 15% increase
Catalysts : 625K to 947K 51% increase
PLEX : 383.7M to 482.2M 25% increase
Veldspar : 9.38 to 11.02 17% increase
Hulk : 197.5M to 195.7M 1% decrease
Thorax : 5.9M to 6.83M 15% increase
Megathron : 77.7M to 93.8M 20% increase

I can go on, but there's no reason to.
For the average miner, plex is barely 10% more expensive.
For the new miner isk is easier to come by(due to ore/mineral prices), hulks are the same price; plexes are easier to get.
Basically, if you're a manufacturer, prices have increased with the production costs, same net profit. plex is 10% more expensive.

Mission runners : The eve algorithem changes mission prices as far as i know to comply with the demand for missions. a mission that isn't being done alot, or that people are constantly failing, will get more isk in it(Varify me on that).

We can safely assume that more people are mining now than they were 4 months ago due to the price rise, meaning that the actual mineral price rise should've been steeper, but more miners are trying to fill in the market gaps.

Where does that leave us?
plex prices have hiccuped 5-15% up depending on your profession.
The nominal price has gone up, but the real price is safe.
For example, let's pin the plex price to tritanium.

1 plex cost 116M tritanium in 1/10/11
1 plex cost 126M tritanium in 1/02/12

a rise of 8%. all this fuss for 8%, really?

Final note on missions, the more prices rise, the less missions become a viable income option. less people run missions, mission rewards rise to meet demand, and the circle is complete.
if mission rewards don't increase, mission running as a profession will become extinct(causing a price rise in all the higher meta prices, which will make mission running profitable again).

It's not magic, It's economics.

edit1:
typo

you can call it market manupulation my dear goon,
but there is something basic;
prices are rising everywhere, Not just plexes.

Tell us more about the ~real economics~ at work Professor Frecko.

heh

as i'm too lazy and far from in order to check the prices myself;
do me a favor and post your next items on the same dates i have, alot have happened during the year.
i'm intrested in only the mineral prices actually.
while you're at it, drop in all the T1 battleships aswell.

Experimental 10mn microwarpdrive, formerly y-t8 mwd.

55000 to 29017, 47% drop.

And loose the coveted "ex-WoW-raider," market niche?

Heaven forbid!

These random lower items don't prove the point.

You can do the same with a stack of other items to show huge increase.

Your second sentence is exactly the point. I easily spotted dozens of other items that have dropped in value... good to keep me entertained for a few days. The statement I was attacking, as our dear Frecko put it, is that "prices are rising everywhere." It is an ignorant blanket statement that so overly simplifies the market as to lead someone to inaccurate conclusions, such as the cause of that increase, and then to inaccurate solutions on how to fix the problem.

The thousands of tier 3 battlecruisers, the increase in demand for drakes, the war in the east and north, changes to anomolies, blahblahblahblahblah all that that is irrelevant. It's inflation. Just look at plex prices! Everything is going up!

Except for those hundreds of other items that have fallen in price. We don't talk about those. They're just outliers.

If the reason for rising costs is inflation, why are the prices and sales volumes of drakes climbing while malkuth missile launchers have dropped to 1/4 of their value a year ago? That's not a rhetorical question.

If the reason for rising costs in inflation, why are cynosural field generators, a t1 mineral-only product without a functional substitute, cheaper now than a year ago?

If the reason for rising costs is inflation, why are the three most expensive minerals all cheaper? (oops, maybe not all minerals are more expensive? what what?)

When tritanium and stuff built with tritanium both go up at the same time, that's not proof of inflation. Nor is 33%ish drop in the value of salvaged armor plates proof of deflation. JFC

If people have a hard on for nerfing incursions, blaming market trends that just happened to kick into gear when tier 3 battlecruisers were delivered on said incursions isn't the appropriate way to get them nerfed.

The ore prices are the best area to show inflation/deflation although not perfect.

The main thing to keep in mind is they need to be weighed based on cost/volume before coming up with a hard number.

Over all trend in past year seems to be: Ore up, anything bought with empire lp down, things bought with pirate lp up, plex prices up.
Most of this seems to be due to incursions.

Would you say that with the power of two rearing it's ugly head at around a time when plex prices could start to come back down, means that perhaps ccp are trying to keep plex prices up as an isk sink untill theyfix incursions??