Market Discussions

They don't say a lot of things. But the priciest moon mineral is only found in a certain part of 0.0. That probably will be fixed eventually CCP-style, if only to mix things up.

Temporarily.

Situation after that depends on what the new landlord wants to do. It is commonly thought that the Tech price is being held artificially high by a cartel.

Once Goons control even more of the Technetium in EVE, they could, in theory, crash the market just to mess up things for the remaining other holders of Tech, starving their income temporarily and possibly inducing drama over it.

Or they could jack up the price even more, simply by holding back supplies and stockpiling. Heck, mere suggestion that they might do so could send the price skywards as manufacturers fill their stockpiles. On the other hand, it is a very risky market to speculate in simply because the "technical floor" of technetium price is far below the current market price. 80-90% of Technetium price is "air", caused by manipulation by Technetium moon holders.

...and all that is even without the factor of :CCP: - it is fully expected that CCP will do *something* about Technetium at some point. Problem is, right now it is the main driving force of conflict in 0.0 that is otherwise effectively worthless space (the only two valuables in 0.0: Technetium and the ability to build supercaps - everything else is overshadowed by high sec Incursion farming) so CCP may be reluctant to just crash the value of Technetium without first fixing the value of 0.0 space holding. Due to the immense costs and organization required to conquer and hold 0.0 space, there has to be a juicy carrot for it and right now there really isn't... except Technetium.

Heck, the main reason why the whole eastern side of 0.0 is infested by RMT bots is because nobody else wants that space due to it being so worthless.

The risk in Technetium is that the price is open to massive swings. If a tech holder wants to do economic warfare, it is a massive loaded gun. Consider this: Even if the large scale Technetium holders would suddenly sell Technetium at 50k per unit, they would still swim in ISK (and a mountain of it) but it could do terrible damage to anyone holding large stockpiles of it (speculators would be grossly in the red and any manufacturer would see that anything they make out of existing stockpiles paid at "full price" is suddenly going to be made at a loss, probably a big loss). More importantly, it would greatly harm anyone funding operations out of small number of Technetium moons.

TLDR: Any time a product on the market is priced according to the whims of just a few individuals, massive and more importantly, lasting swings are possible. Up or down. 99% of EVE market isn't like that - any manipulation or cornering is usually damped out very quickly as market forces move in to profit. Technetium is an exception. Speculate and/or stockpile accordingly.

bots are 95% profit, east is not worthless space its easiest bot space ingame..... try setting up bots for neuting raiders or nasty sansha (bad caldari damage type)

Obviously I was talking "risk" from the perspective of someone who would buy Technetium or Technetium-derivered T2 construction materials from Jita market for industrial purposes.

In fact, the point was that since the sellers have no risk - they are just "printing ISK", anyone speculating on Tech is juggling with a loaded gun that can be remote-fired by a Goon...

Yes, it is a "mathematical loss" but it becomes a real loss when the product you are making goes down in price before you can turn all those materials into finished goods and sell it - while your competition is selling stuff they made out of cheaper materials.

(Naturally same is true other way around - if Technetium price keeps rising, your stockpiles were bought "on the cheap" so your profit margins will like that. It all really depends on your taste of risk and your liquid ISK buffers)