How do short-term commodity price fluctuations work?
Recently I did a mining run in a refinery/extraction system and, since I'm lazy, I was selling everything I mined to a station in that system. After several mining runs (3 runs, approx 2 hrs of game time), I had sold about 50 units of Painite for just above galactic average. On the fourth run, the price suddenly dropped to 3/4 galactic average.
So, I looked at trade routes and found a high tech / industrial system about 40ly away, and BAM they were buying Painite for 75,000 creds a pop. I made quite a little bundle by selling 25 units of Painite.
So, I did that run again immediately: back to extraction system A for Painite and whatever else I could find, then back to industrial system B for the market. Upon my return, the market price for Painite had dropped in the span of an hour to just under galactic average, about half the price of my previous visit.
The wiki entry for commodities does say that prices can change daily, specifically due to player interaction, but I can vouch that I am not in a highly trafficked system, and I haven't spent time here before...
The availability of certain commodities can vary greatly from station to station. Generally stations will produce and consume certain commodities based upon their economy type. Prices of commodities are dynamic and will fluctuate based on a variety of factors, including as a direct result of player interaction. Trade routes and strategies can change on a day to day basis - especially in areas with a high amount of player activity.
My question is, how do these short- term (e.g. in one game session) price changes work? Did I just catch an unlucky server-side update that rolled a bad Painite price at both stations? Or can a couple units (25-50?) of an item change a station's supply/demand that drastically, in that short of a time span?
Pictures about "How do short-term commodity price fluctuations work?"
Why do commodity prices fluctuate?
If current inventories exceed demand, the oversupply tends to drive prices lower. But if the demand is greater than supplies, the inventory deficit tends to push prices higher. Secondly, commodity prices fluctuate due to the technical condition of the market.What are commodity price fluctuations?
The term \u201cprice volatility\u201d is used to describe price fluctuations of a commodity. Volatility is measured by the day-to-day percentage difference in the price of the commodity. The degree of variation, not the level of prices, defines a volatile market.How does shorting a commodity work?
To short a commodity means that you're betting against the price of a raw material. You can short commodities through CFD trading or spread betting, enabling you to sell the market without owning any underlying assets.How does commodity pricing work?
Just like equity securities, commodity prices are primarily determined by the forces of supply and demand in the market. 2 For example, if the supply of oil increases, the price of one barrel decreases. Conversely, if demand for oil increases (which often happens during the summer), the price rises.Dealing with commodity price fluctuations
Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Images: Anna Nekrashevich, Liza Summer, Anna Nekrashevich, Ksenia Chernaya