Cornering the Market – Why it is impossible for Diamonds

*Spoiler needed*

While not entirely related to the original topic, it still discusses EMC's economy.

Lets say that I have 1 DC of diamonds at 60r a few months ago. When the diamond explosion in the economy occurred, I had instantly made money by buying a material at a lower price, and when it rose in price, i could therefore sell higher than what i paid for them. It would seem as though material wealth is a great idea for particular items, like diamond where demand can cause prices to fluctuate greatly, but there is a downside to this effect; It can work in reverse. People buying diamonds at 115r now to stockpile may be wasting their money if a large influx of diamonds or drastic reduction in demand occurs and diamond prices fall.

Material wealth, or wealth in a physical object, is also limited by your items demand. In a normal situation, if you have 10k in a low value material such as sugar or leaves, you have less usable wealth than someone with 10k in a more valuable object such as gold or even a marginally more valuable product like leather.

I've had four failed shops, I think I know how this works

It's all based on how many customers you get relative to the leading shop in the certain product's market.
For most forum users, we are close to around mid-pack when it comes to these situations. Price them close enough to the leading mall to having your tiny share in the market but don't u dare set your buy price on the chestshop higher than the leading mall, or you'll regret it in a heartbeat . Why? Diamonds have a very high liquidity, meaning a Diamond that's stocked to a chestshop has a high likelihood of being out of it within the next hour, even if your prices are to the extreme.

If such an event where the leading mall decides to take a risk and lower the cost of their Diamonds, then it's important for us mid-pack shops to be the last ones to make the decision to transfer along with the leader. You might have the leading malls make a big statement and the lower class shops will probably follow suit since they are trying to promote business, but it's always better to be higher and just have Diamonds sitting around then go lower and see them zapped up within an hour of the news coming out, where the buy sign options that you had at the old prices might come back to haunt you in the long run when you're selling them for less than your buy sign offered.

Just my two cents.

I forgot to mention liquidity in my earlier post, so "Merci comrade!".
Materials also are less liquid, meaning they are less easily transferred. Because physical materials are less liquid than a representative or gold-standard currency, all modern countries use the currencies instead. In EMC, the currency is the Rupee. Rupees have no physical representative, and are therefore very liquid since they can be very easily transferred between players and hold value to all players as a common currency. Physical objects on the other hand, are less liquid because they take up space whether it be space in an inventory, chest or hopper. In addition, they are reliant on demand as stated in my previous post. You will always have X amount of rupees if that is how much you have in rupees. If you store your money in a physical object, i.e. gold blocks, you still have the same amount of money, but it is less liquid because everyone wants rupees but gold blocks.

Very true, Rupees will always be more liquid than the physical object. Currency is based upon the idea that there will always be a flat-line for what can have the most liquidity in society.

The flat-line (Rupees) uses its ability of liquid to determine the liquid of Diamonds, which is a rare item. Rupees are proportional to rarity, and liquidity is the Rupee's little messed up brother that is very hard to understand for everyone, whether you're Todd_Vinton or the newb on the streets.

Haha. I was around when diamonds were 25r or on some occasions 20r. I even got some for like 15r each I believe. Some were even given away every now and then just for fun. These days though, I don't really go around to a lot of the shops cause I got tired of seeing one person selling for a huge amount, while another person sold for very little and was always out.

Ahh... Back in the days of extensive Xray modding and item duplication glitches...

That's my theory... all the hacks have been blocked so people can't sell diamonds cheap

I wish.

Would be nice

EDIT: Check your PM's <3

Don't worry, I saw.
Working on it.