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As a lad, one of my favorite reads was Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In the book, the Hitchhikers Guide (it self a digital book) was a best seller largely because of two reasons: it was slightly cheaper; and it had the words "Don't Panic" written in large friendly letters on the cover. That should be the motto of the inventory-selling-gold-buying player for the next few days. Its going to get worse before it gets better. To the market report!

The company upgrade sale starts to pummel prices. Food raw materials drop, leading the Raw Material Index down to 57.78.

Food prices showed losses across the quality levels with Q1 dropping nearly 7%. The Food Index falls 4.7% to an all-time low of 79.04.

Weapon prices also show wholesale retreat as the ends (Q1 & Q6) show modest losses of less than 0.5%, but the middle group lost significant ground pushing the Weapon Index down 4.2% to 78.46.

Wages continue their 10-day push upwards as the Wage Index rises to 96.95.

Gold holds fairly steady, down slightly to 126.39

The graph


A closer look at the last 10 days


The 1600 AU Index
Based off of the amount of gold a player could earn in a year by working at market wage, selling 20 weapons, 200 food (both Q6) and 1750 raw materials (split 50/50 food/weapons) the 1600 AU Index continues its slide. Gold stays high and market prices are lower with the increase in wages the only bright spot. The 1600 AU Index slides to 282.45



Past 44% upgrades

The last time a 44% off upgrade sale happened (March 22-26), The 1600 Index was tracking the market in eCanada. While the prices are not the same the percentages are roughly equal. So the crack staff here at The Index decided to look at what happened during that last upgrade sale. Our first caveat: correlation does not equal causation. Just because two things happen doesn't necessarily mean one thing caused the other. With that in mind, food prices from the last upgrade.



Food prices fell 9.8% during the sale, then were flat for a few days and then started to recover.

What about weapons?


An even larger drop, followed by some unstable prices before a rally.

Some here at The 1600 Index feel the numbers show a logical pattern. Q1 & Q6 weapon prices had modest losses (about half of a percent), while Q2-Q5 showed losses of 6.88%, 5.67%, 6.53%, 5.26% respectively. Those middle sellers are pushing for more money to buy gold to move to the next level. Moving from Q1 to Q2 only takes 11 gold, with the introduction of he True Patriot, many will already have enough to go from Q1 to Q2. Of course Q6 can't go anywhere so they are not in a rush to sell. But going from Q4 to Q5 takes 111 gold and players may be willing to sacrifice some profit in order to get the last 20-30 gold they need to get to an upgrade level, especially players with large economic bases. Once they're at the new level, prices start to rise as they restock inventory levels.

Food runs similar, except the stronger sellers are on the low end. We're not sure upgraded food is as big a concern as upgraded weapons. After all there's no benefit of a Q2 over two Q1s other than inventory space.

Moving Averages

For those unfamiliar with a "moving average", in the following charts, The blue line represents the market price at 3:00 eRep time. The red line in the 5-day moving average (average of the last 5-days) of market prices. What that tells us is whether prices are trending downward (the market price is below the moving average) or trending higher (the market price is above the moving average).

Normally we'd look at the low-end today, but I think just focusing on weapons might be interesting, if not a bit upsetting. Its not going to be pretty.

Economists like to make assumptions. So lets assume the reader is a heterosexual female. She's out with five friends and runs across a group of six males. They are largely unattractive, except for two gents that are merely average looking. But, by contrast to the larger group, they look really hot. Those two guys, in today's market, are Q1 & Q6:




There are your not-too-bad trendlines.

Uh oh, they have 4 disheveled, farting, loud, poorly-dressed, Harry-Potter quoting friends:








Prices are heading south, we haven't seen the bottom, but it will get better. At least it should, if history is any indication.


Note: prices are reflective of a percentage of Day 1600's price (Hence the "1600 Index"). In other words if an index is quoted at 88, that days price is 88% of the price on Day 1600.

Methodology on prices: prices are taken at 3:00 eRep time. The price is the average price of buying 1,000 Raw materials, 500 Food, 100 weapons (at each quality level), and 8 gold, plus the market wage less any fraction of cc (so 240, rather than 240.1). All qualities are standardized to Q1 (per hit or per health).

Sic transit gloria mundi