What to do when the market dies...

I only made 2k yesterday. there has been a lull across all the various markets I play in and I cannot see any immediate new opportunities to move into to rectify the situation. So what exactly do you do when this happens?

This actually happens quite a lot. I feel its a bit like biorhythms in many ways. Now that probably didnt make any sense at all so let me explain.

Biorhythms are a pseudo science which tries to make predictions based on regular mathematical cycles. I first came across this concept when I was a young lad and had access to my first computer (The BBC Micro B) at junior school in the early 19080s. It had a 'Welcome' package that contained a variety of software - a bat and ball game, a single kingdom simulator and a biorhythm package.

The concept of biorhythms - there are three regular cycles in very person - physical, emotional and intellectual. It cycle starts at the moment of birth.

The physical cycle is 23 days long, the emotional cycle is 28 days long and the intellectual cycle is a 33 day cycle. The cycles are of the sine wave format and are best described using a simple diagram.

Now the middle line on the diagram is zero - so the value always lie between +1 and -1. The idea is that when each of the cycles are in the positive part of the cycle and heading towards +1 then things are good and so on.

Now this is obviously a lot of rubbish, but there are a number of sites out there which can give more information and show your current biorhythm state.

Now for me personally my current biorhythms look like this:

It being the 13th today, my physical score is low but rising, my intellect score is reasonably high but falling, and my emotional score is very high and climbing. So bit of a mixed bag really.

But looking towards next month:

Next month is interesting. From the 10th to the 14th of May everything is great. Big scores all meeting at the approximately the same time... yet two weeks later I fear I should just remain in bed and not risk leaving home just in case!

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Anyway as I have said its all rubbish. Its pseudo science and I give it no credence. But as I also said earlier, the ebbs and flows of WoW markets reminds me of biorhythms.

I find that wow markets move in cycles. Of course there are not as clean as the sine waves above, but there are many things that influence the direction a market is moving. For example the recent announcement about gems has led to dumping of gems, and an increase in the shuffle resulting in the AH being awash with hypnotic dust and celestial essence. The result is that prices have dropped.

Now I have a price I will selling these mats at and a price under which I will not sell. Currently the latter is true and therefore I am sitting on my stock.

This is just one example - other DE mats also go through cycles. No doubt everyone has seen that the price of Greater Eternal Essences has gone from a couple of gold to 30g+ on many many servers since Cataclysm hit. This was all very predictable and no doubt many of us have been earning gold hand over fist because of this.

But occasionally the price of GEEs will drop. usually its someone leveling their enchanting and passing through the 48-58 area of levels before heading off to Outlands. DEing as they go suddenly supply if GEEs (and Illusion Dust) increase, exceeds demand and prices fall.

I could be many more examples - but basically there is always going to be a time when supply exceeds demand - be that by over supply or drop in the need for the item. When this happens prices drop. Then the reverse happens - someone may leave to market due to lack of income, or a new need will arise (think small eggs at Christmas) and the market will rise again.

Everything moves in cycles and sometimes there just isnt as much gold to be made as there was a week/month/year ago. Generally if one market slows another is improving and they balance out. I have said before I try and bring in 5k a day profit to increase my total wealth -and because I am not just involved in a single market I can maintain this with only a reasonable amount of effort.

But what happens when several markets drop simultaneously? I am talking late May in the above picture.

Well the first thing is to remember that this is just part of a cycle and the rut is only fleeting. Very few markets remain flat forever - I admit that in extreme cases it may take an expansion pack to move it but it will move eventually. So just accept that income is down and don't stress about it.

Secondly think about other opportunities. For example - if someone crashes the GEE market with 100+ essences, consider snapping some (if not all) of them up and riding out the glut. That means you can restock your dwindling supplies from pre-cata and be ready to dominate the market once prices climb again.

Likewise think of other uses for the mats. If large brilliant shards are aplenty because someone decides that BRDs is fun to farm, grab them and turn them into scrolls. Most farmers arent interested in the secondary products that can be made from these items, they are just looking for a quick buck.

This all comes back to using snatch correctly. It also means having nerves of steel. Even I get twitchy when a click the "purchase all' button and realise I will be spending 10,000g on about 400 items. But you have to have faith in your convictions. If you dont grab them someone else will...and who would you rather get all that profit?

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Of course there will be times you will get burnt. The Whiptail bug of 4.0.6 was a classic. If you remember, for a few days whiptail spawned constantly in Uldum. The market was awash with the damn stuff.

I knew it had to be a bug and would be fixed, so started purchasing it at 6g a unti expecting it to rise to 10g once the dust settled. Unfortunately the stars were not in alignment for a variety of reasons. The bug wasnt 'fixed' back to previous level - whiptail was easy to farm and people still did. Darkmoon cards werent as profitable the second time round meaning this sink for herbs wasnt a big as it had been previously. Whiptail isnt as useful as say Heartblossom for alchemy. Basically the demand wasnt enough to soak up this massive amount of over supply and has never caught up.

Prices across the 'cataclysm trade goods' board have continued to fall as would be expected, and whiptail can now be picked up for 3-4g a unit every day of the week.

We saw something similar with titanium ore in WotLK - too many people stockpiled it expecting to make a fortune when epic gems arrived. The trouble was that too many people stockpiled and the market never needed that much ore. I dont say money wasnt made, but it wasnt the golden egg that some expected it to be.

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But those are the risks - and being a goblin is about risk all the time. Everything is a gamble and sometimes you lose.

For example - you buy a magus long staff for 18g. You buy it to DE because you know that you the following - you have a 75% chance of getting 1-2 Greater Eternal Essences, a 20% of getting 1-2 illusion dust and a 5% chance of getting a large brilliant shard.

With GEEs selling for 30g, dust selling for 5g and shards selling for 20g - purely by the laws of averages you will get over 36g worth of enchanting mats. This is 100% profit every goblin should be doing this.

The trouble is that although averages pay out in the long term, the RNG can also bite you in short term.

There are five possible outcomes of DEing the above staff:

(37.5% chance) 1x greater eternal essence - worth 30g (12g Profit)

(37.5% chance) 2x greater eternal essence - worth 60g (42g Profit)

(10% chance) 1x illusion dust - worth 5g (13g loss)

(10% chance) 2x illusion dust - worth 10g (8g loss)

(5% chance) 1x large brilliant shard - worth 20g (2g profit)

As I said on average you get 18g25s profit. But in the worse case you actually lose 13g.

This is why you buy items to DE in bulk, and why when your starting capital is low you dont put all your eggs in a single basket.

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So although currently many markets are down for me - there are still opportunities but many of these involve moving items en masse across the neutralAH. Horde prices on Celestials are still 30g+ and there is a great deal of money to be made if did do this. But sometimes its just nice to have a couple of days of peace and quiet without needing to restock the AH every few hours to maximise profit. It gives you time to think outside your comfort zones and consider things laterally rather than just literally.

It also gives you time to look ahead to 4.1, which although a couple of weeks away at the earliest, should still be near the forefront of your minds. So in times like these I tend to do more background research which just means I enter the 'up' phases of the AH markets even stronger because knowledge is still the richest commodity you have. Time doesn't have to be spent scanning the AH to make gold.