To Control a Market, Or Not Control...

To Control a Market, Or Not Control...

...that is the question.

 Controlling a market is not as easy as some make it sound. First of all, if you actually plan on controlling a market, you need to know the market you are controlling and know it well. Don't try controlling the whole market all at once either. You are probably asking many questions at this point, or have many comments, so let me dig deeper and describe what i am talking about a bit more.

 First you want to watch and research the market you plan on controlling. Check to see how many others are actually in the market a good 2 week study will tell you all you need and using TUJ (The Undermine Journal) helps a lot with this.

 Second of all you need to realize if you want to control a specific market, that you don't want to control the item itself you are targeting, you want to control the source of the item you are targeting, if possible. Don't try to take over a major market try for a small portion of a market first and work your way into the market. It might be better to only control only small portions of certain major markets as well.

 Third is deception. You need to make the item you are controlling seem rare and not easy to get. Don't ever flood any market. What i mean by flooding a market is, over-posting/listing items you want to sell on the AH. Try to keep it to a minimum so that the new reset price you will be controlling seems more reasonable to buyers.

"Don't be skurred"

 So now that i have the steps of controlling a market in place let's talk about it more, because this is a set-up for failure. So what do you look for when researching the market you want to control? See the price difference of a 2 week span of whatever market it is you want to control and see who were the main contributors to the posted/sold items. Look out for unusual behavior such as always posting for a certain amounts, even when the average price of the item is much higher. Such unusual behavior shows you right away that you most likely won't be able to control the market because you cannot control another players behavior no matter how weird it might seem to you, you can't do anything about what someone else wants to do. (Learned this type of thought process of knowing you cannot control basic human behavior from Powerword: Gold)

 As far as controlling the targeted market you want to control, let's say gems to keep it simple and in my ballpark of reasoning since i am fairly new to gold making still. So, how do you control this huge constant mass of gems incoming and outgoing? You watch/research the Ore needed to prospect to make the gems and also watch the raw gems. Now in cases such as bots farming ore, you cannot control the ore itself since it is massive enough as is, so your next plan other than buying as much as you can afford, within budget you set for yourself, is to control the raw gems that are needed to cut the gems that are the targeted market. Now this is fairly easy to do with gems, but i assure you it is not an easy task in other markets. I have started trying out Glyphs and even though i joke with a friend that i will control this market i have high doubts that i will be able to succeed. Why do i have doubts? Glyph market has many more items to watch and there is many ways to create the glyphs so to cut off the source i would have to watch all herbs, pigments and inks needed to make all 300+ glyphs available currently in patch 4.3.

 My conclusion to controlling markets is that, it can be done, but is not very easy and in some cases just not possible now matter what the market is due to uncommon variables that can and will occur. So do you research and watch the market closely and make sure you can do it before you jump into it.