PLEX price being moved by Eastern European economic circumstances. No bots, no CCP direct involvement

Communications Center Out Of Pod Experience
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Kevin Hoefman, at Eve Fanfest 2016, discussing the University of Ghent’s LAB-M research project.

EVE Fanfest 2016 - LAB-M: EVE and the Economics of War

A great presentation, that covers PLEX price phenomena, particularly externalities from Eastern Europe that drive them.

Points to keep in mind for 2018/2019 state of things,

1 US Dollar / 65.47 RF Ruble Meaning the same circumstances that made Eve Online subscription prices undesirable for those in economies outside the USD and Euro, are still in effect.

Russian Unemployment in Dec till now hovering at 4.9%, Bank of Russia keeping one week-repo rate at 7.9 interest rate, and the most significant is Russian consumer price inflation rose to 4.3 from 3.8 in one month ( no early 2019 data yet) highest since June 2017.

Also, you continue to have the U.S. driving both itself and the Russians, as leading oil produces, to over produce oil at lowering cost, yet continued interest to the development cost for doing so, i.e., having to pay for what your doing by further producing oil, increasing supply.

This will lead to more mining, trading, passive income seeking, well beyond what botting itself is responsible for, i.e., washing ISK over the Eve economy as Eastern Europe and elsewhere look to PLEX to Omega, not subscribe, hence greater demand for PLEX overall, generating higher prices as fewer on the sell side are buying PLEX with real world money to meet the demand, for the moment.

I think the video from 2016, when he gets to PLEX price modeling back then is the clearest explanation for this all, which we have seen before.

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Good thing I have 8900 plex saved up :blush:
Yes…I know thats not much. Profit is profit tho.

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Just curious, where is your price point? 5.1 Mil ISK? Or gradual selling off of small lots as the prices rise, to try and catch the high?

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Ill ride each wave and cash in at the high points. However its a gamble considering they could crash at any moment.

Realistically we could have a wale decide to quit playing. He could try to go out with a bang and be remembered by plunging the market into chaos selling his for almost nothing for a last laugh.

I know if I had the means it would be funny as crap just to renew for an extra month to watch jita chat abd drink beer after…

Edit* yay for autocorrect on iphones…

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Junkies always find money for their habit. So do crack heads, meth users, gamblers, etc. The price of the drug doesn’t matter so long as it is controlled by 1 source. Users will pay 5 dollars a hit in times of plenty and in times of famine will pay 30 dollars a hit. Such is the market for anything which brings great pleasure to the user, especially an alternate reality…

Unless the above factors are figured in - which is an entirely different set of mathematical equations most economic forecasters cannot even begin to understand as a whole yet alone to break things down regionally or closer - then the model used is broken and only speculation drives the “perceived” market and “perceived” markets ONLY effect the investors who dump money on speculations but invest not in deeply understood reality. Spread sheets don’t matter when endorphins are in play. Well - they do matter of course, and those who make this leap are the ones here in game and beyond who have more ISK and wealth in their wallets just for being aware than any day trader who merely went to school and only understands the black and white of things without being able to see any of the gray. I pray that makes sense, as it is late…

Eve isn’t merely a game - It is an alternate life, it is a lifestyle, it is a nagging in the back of the mind which consumes people, it is no different than a drug which must be had by certain users and in various quantities… and when endorphins are involved anything is possible…

Two pence deposited.

Lei

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nah…it’s a game.

I invite you to consider your relation to eve somewhat carefully.

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That sounds like escapism.

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Man, I wish people would stop flailing about and starting new threads on this.

No, a theoretical concept, from an ivory tower scholar, from 3 years ago, does not explain what is happening with EVE today. Nor are many of the assumptions and data even all that relevant anymore.

In Sep of 2018, CCP was acquired by Pearl Abyss, a Korean, F2P, grindfest, often decried as a “Pay 2 Win” game publisher. This is the biggest and most significant thing to have affected EVE’s potential future and direction, probably since EVE was released.

When big potential changes occur, speculators jump in wherever they think ‘future change’ will mean big market changes - shortages, changes in pricing, removal of products, whatever. Until PA makes their intentions (more) clear, it is potentially on the table that Plex might be pulled from the cash shop and something else put in its place. More likely, given the fact that hundreds of millions of RL $$ were spent on CCP, and that PA has to earn that back, some people may have assumed that the Plex cost of a month’s Omega might rise from 500 to 600, for instance.

Thus, people took a while to think about the potential consequences, and then this happened.

EVE_Plex_Sales_May2017_2019
EVE_Plex_Sales_May2017_2019.PNG1525×376 61.4 KB

Jaggy blue line on top is the number of Plex actually traded each day. As can be seen, the number of Plex being bought/sold each day has changed very little over the past two years - trending slightly down. There is even a significant uptick in the past few months… more Plex is being traded than average! It would be nice if we had access to CCP numbers to see how many ‘raw’ Plex were being sold but I can’t find that anywhere.

The key event in my view, is the massive purchase on Nov.23/26 2018, where daily sales of approx. 2 million Plex ballooned to 3.7 million, 4.1 million, 5.8 million, and 4.3 million consecutively. Number of orders placed also more than doubled during this period. Average price per Plex went down noticeably, which means this was thousands of buy orders picking up all the cheap Plex across all the regions in EVE. (Orders placed during this period more than doubled.) This was followed by a couple days of lower prices, presumably by people who thought the lower average prices meant ‘Plex was on the way down’ and decided to sell quickly.

After that, we see the average price of Plex begin to rise steadily. Before this spike in trading/speculation/hoarding, the average price of Plex went from 2.6 million in May 2017 to 3.2 million in Nov.2018. 23% gain over 18 months. Somewhat high, but perhaps partially being driven by more Alpha accounts trying to Plex. After this spike, Plex went from 3.2 million to 4.2 million. 31% gain in less than 5 months. Most of the Plex traded during that peak period has not re-entered the market - either being hoarded for resale, or held in reserve to ensure the ability to Plex accounts later.

This is not a CCP supply/player demand problem. This is almost certainly a case of millions of Plex being taken out of the market in under a week, triggering a speculative momentum bubble that has not (as yet) had a Plex sale or other trigger to break it.

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I’m sorry reality and data do not support your dogma.

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No, it isn’t.

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I am terribly sorry for injecting any of my opinion into your thread. I humbly bow out to my betters and their Learned debate.

Most Humbly - Cheers :slight_smile:
Leiron

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and don’t you forget it!

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As noted in my previous post, almost 12 million Plex were bought out of the market at the lowest prices back in Nov.2018. This, along with the usual seasonal shortage of Plex, likely triggered the escalating price bubble in Plex.

However, unless that Plex was used to acquire 24,000 months of Omega time (or over 100,000 Skill Extractors), it is still waiting around to generate profit. As is much of the millions of Plex traded since the bubble began.

Adam4Eve : Plex Market Details

As can be seen, Plex has dropped almost 200,000 ISK, or nearly 5%, over the past 3 days. Sell volume has gone up, Buy volume down. People hanging onto Plex have already missed their chance to sell at peak prices.

We’ll see how this affects the ongoing market.

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Trivia: When did CCP start the sales marathon last year? :slight_smile:

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easy sailor

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Topic Moved to Out of Pod

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Out of Pod? Why? It very much has to do with Eve.

I’d greatly appreciate a reason on why this was moved this way, and replies are clearly on topic to Eve, relevant current topic, and belongs in the General Discussion category if anywhere.

Alright, well, guess I’ll have to chalk up to arbitrary moderation bias or social media style censorship of the topic.

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I didn’t read it but subject related to systems outside of EVE can be in Out of Pod.

That means that subject which are both with EVE and out can be in Out of Pod.

(I won’t mention about variants, because, when info is used as a weapon, things can get ugly.
It has to do with the kind of damage.
Ingame [or, in-game] damage is more manageable due to the sandbox nature of the system.)

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