Merchant Archive
Thread: Stock exchange for merchants idea
I had a silly idea yesterday watching the economic news.
Create an ingamestockexchange on each server, maybe only letting merchants use it.
Could this be doable?.
What would be traded?
I'm not saying it's a bad idea, just wondering where you're going with it.
Lots of problems, including a distinct inability to automatically determine profit of sold items.
What is possible is crafter cooperatives that share resource harvesting responsibilites and/or profits. In essence, each crafter is a shareholder in a larger entity. This is essentially what many PAs currently do.
I like the idea of global markets... commodity markets, stock markets, etc. I just can't see how some of this would actually be implemented.
In real life we have the SEC to regulate the stock market. How would any rules be enforced in game? If I sold a few million credits worth of shares in BoberFetts Droid Emporium, what's to stop me from running off with the money? In real life that person is jailed. Unless the devs implement perma-death, what are the penalties for scams?
hehe.
OK, who should determine the going rate for a resource? While in real life iron is iron is iron is iron, it's not like that here. The reason there's money to be made in the iron market (or any commodity market)is because while the demand and supply are always changing, the product is roughly the same. Iron with crappy stats is not worth as much as iron with good stats, and there's no way that any kind of static value can be placed on it. Since any given resource only around a brief time (7-8 days max) there's no historical sales data to base prices on.
Just to expand the idea for people that might not understand how this would work in practice.
Lets say you have 1000000 units of this 'stuff'.
You put it up on auction at I dunno, lets say 1000 creds per unit. That's pretty steep, unlikely anyone could buy the whole lot at that price. You can even increase the initial starting cost or amount available, but its not necessary.
From there, it is one big auction, much like the auction system currently on the bazaar, with reserve prices, and minimum sale values.
- So, you put in your bid for X number of units at 1000 credits each.
- Everyone else also puts in bids. The highest bids naturally win. Those bids determine the new price of the stock (after all, that was what was paid for it)...its like artworks, the value of the artwork is what someone is prepared to spend.
- So all these people that got an initial slice of the stock have determined the current value of the stock. They can either hang onto it, or sell it at the new price. You may even want to sell bits and hold onto the rest.
- So you sell some bits off, if all of the stock is not sold off in the second round, it is rare and more valuable than the initial run. People bid higher to get a slice, after the auctions are complete, the price can go up.
- If the price goes up too high, people might sell off in larger and larger chunks thereby increasing supply, and possibly reducing demand. This can lower the price, and then people start trying to buy into the stocks again.
This can go on forever, you can have one set of stocks to trade, or multiple sets. It requires nothing more than the players desire to make money off other people.As you can see no money is generated by the system it all comes from the players. No money leaves the system it all goes back to players. The winners are the ones making money off the losers.
If the system determines that all the stocks are being held onto (there are none available for trade) it can issue new units for trade to the open market. So long as the total value of the units in play remain constant (their values aren't included in the system until they are bought), then the system remains stable and there is no inflation or deflation.
You could have different stock sets with different rules. Stock A can be 1000 cpu with no minimum. Stock B can be 10,000 cpu, must have a minimum of 10 stocks, etc.
Fairly simple when you think about it.
BoberFett wrote:
OK, who should determine the going rate for a resource? While in real life iron is iron is iron is iron, it's not like that here. The reason there's money to be made in the iron market (or any commodity market)is because while the demand and supply are always changing, the product is roughly the same. Iron with crappy stats is not worth as much as iron with good stats, and there's no way that any kind of static value can be placed on it. Since any given resource only around a brief time (7-8 days max) there's no historical sales data to base prices on.
A simple bid/ask system would work. You have a galaxy-wide bazaar for resources, for example. As a seller, you place 100,000 of resource xyz onto the system and put an ask price of 4.5 cpu. Now, anyone can then purchase any amount (up to 100,000) at 4.5 cpu. They still have to travel to pick it up (I like delivery systems, but none exist in the current game). If only 20,000 gets sold at this price, great. You can withdraw or reprice the other 80,000.
Suppose no one is sellingthe resource you want, or they are selling it for more than you are willing to pay. You specify that you are willing to purchase resource 20,000 of XYZ for 3 cpu. This is the bid. As soon as someone places this resource on the market at this price or less, it is instantly sold to you. You still have to pick it up.
Now, this is relatively simple - you don't have any complicated logic to say "I will buy 10,000 to 20,000 units of Axidite Iron with OQ > 800 and CR > 700 for 5 cpu". It is simply "I will buy 10,000 units of Carbestiiate <use the actual resource instance name> for 5 cpu". Yes, you need to know the details of the resources, but sites like www.swgcraft.com help with that. Perhaps you could have bids for generic resources as well (irregardless of stats) like "I will pay 3 cpu for 100K of Tolium Reactive Gas", which would get triggered by any spawn of any quality.
The beauty of the system is that at any given time you have a good idea of what the floor price is (the bids) and the ceiling price (the asks). So you can price stuff outside of the market accordingly. Also, it gives miners an idea of what to mine (by looking at the asks). I think ultimately it is a huge benefit to crafters who will see expensive resources come down in price (more miners on the most valuable resources) and an even bugger benefit to scouts or rangers who will have a simple way to sell hides and meats.
To some extent, I know this devalues the resource merchant. But true resource merchants (those that sell on vendors rather than via direct contact with the crafters) are few and far between anyway.
The purpose of stock is to allow people to purchase a portion of a business. Technically, stock holders have a say in the way the company is run. they select (generaly by proxy) a board of directors, who in turn selects a Cheif Operating Executive. The CEO is then the face of the business, running daily operations. This may seem irrelavant, but what amount of money would make decide to allow someone else to be CEO of my weaponsmith business and what would prevent me from accepting the investor money and changing professions? (This is all before profit sharing is even introduced).
The closest this game has to a stock market is the resource trade. Buy a chunk of good irolunn gas and try to sell it off when the supply is low, but before a new spawn occurs.
Actually, stocks aren't needed to be 'in' something, like a company or whatever.
Stock trading is just that 'stock' but stock can be anything from money to resources to bits of paper that say you own a piece of a company. The 'unit' of trade is rather irrelevant, the only important thing is what people are prepared to pay for it.
So you setup some units of this 'stock', people start buying into it, the price rises, some people sell out the price drops, more people buy in, the price rises. All it is is a redistribution of wealth, no money is created or destroyed by the system, except perhaps in brokerage fees.
Generally it might help if the units actually meant something, but its not necessary. Speculative trading works when there are people that have too much money in general, and they are looking for something to do with it.
Gambling mixed with boredom. Interesting combination for money making.