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What exactly is the point to this?

Because from what I can see you're just posting numbers, there's nothing on how you got them are what they meant to mean.

It is an index. It is an indication of value over time... There is a bit of maths behind the values based on the larger sellers of the food and the price that it is offered at.

It does show that Q1 and Q2 food is being sold for less than their frm value.

You don't need an index to see that a lot of people are selling at a loss, been that way for a long time.

but how much? are there some times when prices are not as much of a loss as others? Having something to show that it is not worth selling food at the moment might put people off from dumping. In addition if the there is a trend to worse or better wouldn't it be nice to know?

In RL what is the Dow Jones or the ASX200? or the point of commodity reports? If you don't want to read this article feel free not to.

Man, you are so encouraging to new players it is wonderful to be here.

If you want to tell people that they are losing money this isn't the way to do it because it doesn't actually tell people that.

The correct way to do that is to compare it to the cost of the RM used to make it.

Now according to the wiki you use 1 RM per food per Q? (going by each factory producing 100 × Q? per 100 produced).

Looking at the current lowest bidders (the lowest bidders are the ones you should be looking at, there isn't any point in looking beyond the first page as most people will buy the cheapest in a given quality level) for Q1,2 and 3 food and FRM it actually appears that they aren't losing money (not that they're making much either, 1¢ or 2¢ profit on each item).

Not that it'll ever pay back the capital cost of the factory, but admin doesn't care about that, they only care about getting people to buy gold.

The calculations do not take into consideration high prices (e.g. those likely to be on page 2) unless there is too little volume available. Indeed it only takes into consideration the larger sellers of the cheapest food. If there is a lack of sellers or volume then the data can become skewed - I mention that when it happens.

Statistics are useful if you want to apply them. On their own they can be useless. So, if you want to compare the index with raw material costs (which I intend to do in the near future) you should get a good idea of the "market" and whether it is worth while.

I agree that too many people set up businesses because they want to not because it is a profitable thing to do.

This game is more about the war side of things than the business side (otherwise admin would've fixed the economy long ago), you'll probably find that a lot of people (especially those who buy gold) are perfectly happy to run at a loss.

On the issue of the calculations, you haven't described exactly what you do, that makes it hard to understand exactly what your numbers really mean.

Markets in eRep also seem to change a lot quicker than RL, 24 hours between snapshots would probably miss a lot (I suspect the most interesting time is just after day change when a lot of people are making things and then selling them).

You are so right. I should just stick to RL. With such ignorance of what an index is and such a high level of encouragement I should really concentrate on finishing my RL gardening.

Thanks for talking me around. I'll try and de-register my account now.