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中文版
各位朋友,
今天我来给你们简单介绍一下金融巿场。这星期我收到好几封电邮查询如何操作金融巿场，虽然我不太情愿暴内幕，但其实金融巿场的交易并不复杂，也正因为大家不熟悉我才能从中获利。

首先我们先谈谈它的由来。你们要是有金融背景的话也可能知道大部份我提及的东西是有相关联的特定的术语，但是基于这篇文章的目的我将会用所有玩家都能懂的语言。以往每个国家都有自己的货币。现在所有的货币都已经统一到单一的标准，也就是在无头鸡改革的时候所有货币的"平均"价值了。

过往每个国家都有自己的货币而每种货币都有自身的价值。当时你有两个方法赚钱--第一是卖出少量的货币和黄金(双卖)，第二是买入黄金再将之换成更高价值的货币(买卖)，这种只适用于边际利润较大的时候。最后就是卖出一种货币直接换成另一种货币，由于一些产铁量较高的国家(特别是俄国) 的人趋向消秏较多的货币去买铁或者付工资，这方法是比较罕见但是有利可图的。

当所有货币统一到单一巿场以后，所有事都不同了。原本有一个金融巿场的机械人在巿场里定时买走货币然后消除它。那通时是占特定数额的挂单的一定的百分比。那时的小技巧是只需算出那机械人会买的最大数量和算好时间。虽然有时巿场明显去到一个鸡高兴的点(大约是300CNY=1Gold) 然后鸡关上机械人(鸡仍声称根本从来都无机械人存在)。

现在所有黄金和货币的买卖都是其他玩家能看到的。正因如此，技巧就是要成为巿场当眼的挂单。这也是有局限性的- 你们可能跟我一样，想买10G的时候通常会无视0.5G的挂单，因为买数额小的挂单是费时失事的- 同样的当你想买10000CNY 的时候你也可能会无视那堆数额小的挂单。

Gold 方面的金融巿场很简单- 如果你想快速卖金你只需要挂一个最便宜的单，留在金融巿场的页面猛按F5。如果有人比你的售价便宜0.01诸如此类的你只需再降低你的价钱。永远都有傻逼挂更低价的单子- 只需要等人买了那堆囧单子- 或者有时间的话你可以自己买了然后再重新挂单。你的Gold会很快被买然后你可以卖了你赚回来的CNY。

说到比较复杂的戏肉了。金融巿场的挂单的时限是整整十日的。所以如果我在D2000 12:00 erep 时间挂单，那挂单会在D2010 的12:00 erep 时间过期。修改或者重新张贴那挂单会令那时计重新计算。这时你不能减价求卖- 这刻卖出价一定要是0.005 才能赚取利润(尽管有很多0.06的挂单，但老实说都是打不响的如意算盘)。

在我看来好像大部份人都是守株待兔，或者选定一个特定的范围去卖他们的货币- 如果他们有十个组织号他们可能会每天在12:00的时候挂单。现在那技巧是如何令到你的挂单变成在当眼位置越久越好的挂单。意思是当你查看时，可能那挂单不是在很顶端的位置，但是在你挂单前的其他挂单数额只介乎2000CNY-10000CNY。这种数额少的挂单通常很快就被买走又或者完全被无视。

要找出到底有没有那在你组织号以前的空间，你可以看看挂单的列表。到金融巿场货币方的页面，去到最后一页然后一直往回直至翻到第一个0.005 的挂单。现在你要不查看最后一个挂单然后等一段时间去看看有没有人贴大额的挂单，又或者你只期望之前的那堆挂单不是全部在2分钟前一并贴出来的。基本上你需要20-30分钟卖出那当眼的挂单。所以如果20-30分钟内你没看到其他大额的挂单(通常有10-12个小额挂单同时贴出，如果你只看到10-12小额挂单，就贴吧), 那是值得的。

正如你所想的其实也就是拼一拼。你求神拜佛也不希望有人在你挂了29分钟以后突然跳出来贴个大额挂单，然后你又再呆等过。但信我吧- 跟在大额挂单后面你是卖不出什么的。至于要贴几多呢- 我会说50000CNY 大致上是你能卖出的上限。我曾经听过有人行大运，卖出了100000CNY，但是大多数时间都是30000CNY左右。所以如果你有很多个组织号在手然后又没钱，挂小额的单子。我们大部份人银弹也都没那么足。

现在你可以想像到，这是一个费时的过程。有时我查看8-9次巿场而每次我都查看时都不是挂单的好时机。有时你会碰上巿场的清货时间，但是由于Erep鸡了或者是所有人都去了度假等等的理由，单子仍然卖不出去。这没有定律，而你有越多的组织号在手对整体利润来说风险越少。现在我负责打理12个组织号，虽然个别的组织号可能会失败，团体形式意味着对个人或者组织来说风险都比较低。

最后，没有组织号的个别玩家也能在金融巿场玩一把。你只需谨记每次你只能放售价值10G的货币- 或者2000CNY。任何多于上述价值的挂单是挺天真的，而且是浪费时间。虽然份量不多，但是卖出的机会相当高，与直接在金融巿场购买Gold相比的话你亦可以节省约10-15%的钱，所以还是值得的。

Iain, 本届财政部长
（翻译自85的漂亮老婆）

英文版
Dear friends,
Today I’m coming to you with a brief article about money market trading. I’ve had a couple of mails this week asking how to operate the money market, and although I’m usually loath to give away insider “secrets”, there is nothing complicated about MM trading, and it’s to my benefit if other people aren’t quite so bad at it.

Firstly let’s talk about where it came from. Those of you with a financial background would probably recognise that most of what I’m talking about has specific terminology associated with it, but for the purpose of this article I’m going to use language any player should understand. So in the past each nation had it’s own currency. At the moment every currency is pegged to a single standard, which was essentially the “average” value of currency when the admins introduced the change.

In the past each nation had it’s own currencies with it’s own values. You could make money two ways- firstly in small amounts by selling currency and selling gold (double selling), secondly by buying gold then selling it into a more valuable currency (buy sell) which only worked when the margins were larger. Finally buy selling one currency directly into another currency, which was rare but profitable as nations with high-iron resources (Russia especially) tended to consume a lot of currency from people who were buying it to purchase iron or pay workers.


With the advent of the single market, that all changed. Initially there was a MM bot in the market which periodically bought currency and deleted it. It tended to be a percentage of the size of the offer up to a certain amount. At the time the trick was simply to work out the largest amount the bot would buy and time it right. However at some point the market clearly reached a point the admins were happy with (about 300c/gold) and they turned off the bot (which they still claim never existed).

Now all sales on both sides of the market (currency and gold) are to other players. Because of this, the trick is simply to have the top offer on the market. Now there are limitations to this- those of you who like me have went to buy 10g normally ignore offers of 0.5g because it’s too much of an effort to buy little offers- similarly if you wanted to buy 10k cc you might ignore half a dozen smaller offers.

On the gold side of the market this is simple- if you want to sell gold quickly you just post the cheapest offer, stay on the mm and refresh. If someone else beats your price by 0.01 or so you just lower your price again. You always get the odd idiot who will post a much cheaper price- just wait for them to get bought up- or buy it yourself and repost it if you have time/inclination. Your gold will be bought very quickly and you’ll be at able to sell the currency you’ve made.

Now this is the complicated part. Offers on the money market last exactly 10 days. So if I were to post at 12:00 erep time on day 2000, the offer would expire at 12:00 erep time on day 2010. Modifying or reposting an offer “resets” this clock. Now you can’t beat the price to sell- at the minute the sell price must be 0.005 to make a profit (though there are a LOT of offers at 0.06 which frankly is wishful thinking).

It seems to me most people just “click and pray” or go for a regular spacing when they sell their currency- if they have 10 orgs they might post at 12:00 each day. Unfortunately since everyone has this idea you have a lot of orgs expiring at about the same time each day. Now the trick is to sell so that your offer is the *top significant offer* for as long as possible. That means that when you look at it, it might not be at the top, but the offers before it are only 2000-10,000 currency. These small offers are either bought up quickly or ignored altogether.

To find out whether you have that space before your org, you can go through the offers list. Go to currency sale side of the market, go to the last page and work your way backward until you get to the first currency offers for 0.005. Now you can either check the last offer and wait for a period of time to see if any big offers are posted, or you can just hope that the previous offers weren’t all posted at once 2 minutes ago. Basically you need about 20-30 minutes as top significant offer to sell out an org. So if you have no other big offers made in 20-30 minutes (usually about 10-12 small offers are made in that time, so if you see 10-12 small offers, just post), then it’s worth it.

As you can imagine this is a bit of a game of dare. You are hoping someone else doesn’t come along and post 29 minutes after you’ve been waiting with a huge offer so you have to wait again. But trust me- posting just after a big offer you’ll sell next to nothing. As for how much to post- I would say 50k is the upper limit of what you’re likely to sell. I’ve heard of people getting a good run, and selling 100k, but most of the time it’s more like 30k. So if you have lots of orgs and no money, post smaller offers. Most of us don’t have that luxury.

Now as you can imagine, this is a time consuming process. Some days I check the market 8-9 times and every time I check it’s unsuitable for posting. Sometimes you get a great big clear period on the market, and it still doesn’t sell because erep is down or everyone is out for a big holiday or whatever. It’s not an exact science, and the more orgs you control the lesser the risk to the whole profit. At the moment I manage twelve orgs, and though individual orgs may fail, the corporate model means there is less risk to any individuals or organisations.

Finally- individuals without organisations *can* play the money market. Just remember that you can only sell 10g worth of currency - or 2000. So anything bigger than that is silly, and just wastes your time. It’s still worth doing- such a small amount will have a very good chance of selling and you’re saving about 10-15% of the price of buying gold from the mm directly.

Anyway I hope this has cleared up what is essentially a very murky subject in erep that few people are aware of.

Iain