The item market scandal

Guys what if a group of elite billionaires get together buy up all the ecans all the edvd and control the market value of them with that strat bc that's market breaking I mean the group buys every last edvd and they'd be the only ones with them and list them all expensive af like 20mil then its rly they're market they decide all the prices and they start doing it with other things 

After posting this message in global chat I got attacked

Them trying to shut me up 

I'm into something and it's big way bigger than all of us casual players combined 

That doesn't surprise me one bit

Market manipulations have always been tried, and even if they do this; they will still need buyers who can afford the higher prices

Not all eDVD are for sale

Not all will be priced cheaply to profit

Cans would be interesting to see, but there are so many sources of cans (Halloweek, Christmas) that it would cost A LOT to push prices up

probably not a good idea

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For 20 mil per edvd? You can be part of them you know, that elit billionaires

Start the venture with buying my edvds for 7 mil each. I am hoarding that much in jp :D

Some players just love to Torn while stoned.

Tell me one thing, would you be willing to spend 20m to get 25E? Is it worth it?

Also there's 2 of each type of energy drink, to buy up all of the 4m cans, you need to spend 5 trillion to buy them all at current circulation and current prices. Don't think anyone has that amount of money freely available to make a gamble on e drinks.

Edit: I misread eDVD for eDrinks, ignore my points about energy, but my point still stands, the market cap is too high to justify buying it all up. Also Adult Novelties provide eDVDs regularly, and there are stock payouts too, with a constant inflow, it's going to be very hard to turn a huge profit.

Market manipulation for profit is already here, it just isn't as organized as your what if scenario as many of those top players are in rival factions.  Also, anyone can buy seasonal items low and sell high..  Market manipulation and insider trading happen all the time in the real world too.  In the US some politicians do quite well with insider trading making about 9% per month - what normal folks hope to make in a year.

It just takes a single player to not play that game for the idea to collapse, why could you buy 20mil Edvds when there's someone else selling them at 4mil? He gets more costumers, gets money to get more Edvds, he has all the clientele forcing the others to lower the prices eventually.

There is a consistent supply, where a huge amount of players get erotic dvds every single week through stock benefits! No matter how many are bought up there will consistently be people undercutting them.

also it’s no really the end of the world if the price goes up to much, if you can’t afford something you don’t buy it! Simple enough!

There are 2 companys and a city job that provide energy drinks to the system, then you have holidays, and stocks that provide more energy drinks at an influx. 

Theres a company and stock for eDVDs.

You would have to target something thats more niche, such as Casino passes, stripograms, poison mistletoe and love juice. these items may spawn on the map and can be acquire through holidays, but have less influx.

After posting in global you got attacked 

So your plan B was to post in the forum??

I'm sorry that your ability to think was what dribbled down your mom's arse crack all those years ago

The main problem with that strat is this:

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Despite being a popular consumable the supply is still rising ~50k every 3 months.

Even if the "elite" bought them all up, and sold them at 20m, they'd still be lots entering supply which would eventually drop the price.

It's even worse than that because there are other options to gain happy.

I get your an off and on again player who doesn't really understand how things might work, so I won't rag on you, cause youre at least a BIT correct in your speculation.

There are players manipulating the market. There are NO players manipulating the market for the high price/circulation items. The amount of money it would take to manipulate the market for EDVDs and ECans is insane. And few targeted market manipulations schemes are capable of pushing prices up to 5x that of their original market price. I'd go so far to say you couldn't possibly push any item that high through manipulation.

The items in the item market that you can manipulate are the low cost, high circulation items. Like mid tier candies and alcohol. But these items you can only really pushing 10%-20% higher than their base cost. You also have low circulation items with suddenly high demand, such as materials related to new crimes. People who want to get a new crime to 100% will spend a premium for the items to let them do so, and manipulators are speculating which items will be in the highest demand and when they will be in high demand so they know when to buy up stock and hold it from the market to inflate the price. Really no different than with what happened to Forgery Items when that crime came out. 

So no, there isn't some shady organization that it working to inflate EDVD prices. There are however a couple dozen people working loosely in small informal groups to buy up certain low cost items to try and push minimum prices higher, so they can flip the items and turn a 20ish percent profit, and maybe strike it big on pushing the new hot crimes items.

How you know I was bro

I'm not saying they are going straight to 20mil each that isn't smart they're doing it slowly but surely 

wouldn't work for items that are so readily available

Ya we need more reasons to make new players quit.

Good idea...

Torn is a wonderful free market, there are very few interventions/price controls set by the devs, so the prices on things does a great job of reflecting the general pressures of supply and demand. 

What does that mean for your idea? Well it just wont work. Someone can buy up all the stock right now, but unless they control the means of production they will only have a temporary impact, unless they buy up all supply for all time, which would end up being unprofitable because of my next point. So the next factor, lets assume that someone does perpetually buy all stock, and tries to sell things way overpriced. Will people buy it? Generally speaking, yes some will, but most wont. That is how the free market works, if you overprice something you will drive demand down, so you will sell fewer DVDs. Its not like every player had unlimited funds accessible to them. Players will either stop using the DVDs or will find cheaper alternatives like candies. 

Now if someone was able to control the production of a given item, then yeah they can set the price because they have a monopoly, but in Torn that is impossible for all the general consumables that people want. There are so many sources of new items that it is impossible for anyone group of people to lock down the supply. The best you can hope for is to temporarily disrupt a market, sell quick, and make a short term profit. But people will immediately undercut you so you are taking a risk to try it. 

If you're not willing to camp the market all day for deals *and* take on the risk for selling bulk expensive shit, then yeah, you're not going to get deals nor be the one to profit off of market manipulation.

Simple economics, but the economics isn't the economics of pixel money like you think it is, it is the economics of time.

Time is a valuable commodity.

Bulk is a service in Torn, and bulk items are more valuable because someone else used their time to put them into a bulk order.