Brendan's Ramblings

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A recommendation on how to organise your Trading Post investments.

2015-04-24

Back to Guildwars2 again! And as per usual focused on the Tradepost (and I have no idea why I call it that, it just seems to have stuck.)

Greetings!

I got into using the tradepost soon after I started the game, leveling up it was fantastic, being able to buy everything from Jute Scraps to the best weapons was just like a power rush. It took a while but I discovered that Gw2 had a public API, and other associated sites had them too. Now for a datamaniac like me being able to access all that data was like one of the best headrushes. This is where my modding Eggbarons sheet came into play. I have learned alot about trading and making a profit since then.

I have found that the easiest way to keep track of everything is to break it up into different sections which comes as no surprise follows real life investments. As follows:

Short term.

These encompass everything that takes a day or less, mostly flipping, promotion and crafting. I have a habit for these, in the morning I pick up materials from the tradepost, process them and list the finished product. By evening they have sold and I collect the profits and order the materials overnight, ready to start the cycle the next day. Its a fairly constant supply of gold, about 20g daily, while being relatively fast to do. The hard part is finding a niche where you can maximise your gains for the least amount of effort.

Medium term.

For me these are the items that take more than a day but less than a week to complete. I used to flip Precursors and Legendaries and these fell into this category. (I eventually gave this up because it was too stressful, you place an order and someone overbids by 1c, you relist, it happens again, play cat and mouse for a week and it is tiring.) For this length of time I record everything in a spreadsheet, I have a link to the spreadsheet below. Stuff for this length normally works out at 25g/day.

Long term.

For me it is anything more than a week to about three months. One I do regularly in this range is Black Lion Skins. I normally get them once they have reached lowest price then hold on for the months (can go longer depending on the skin). As you may expect I also have these in a spreadsheet. With the skins I currently have no profit as I am reinvesting the profits back in, the eventual goal is that I can get two if each skin each time.

Bonds.

A bond is a secure very long term investment, these are normally loans you can purchase from your countries central bank. Normally these are 100% guaranteed in exchange for a low interest rate.
In Gw2 we have something similar. We have Gems. If you exchange gold to gems it will break even at about three months. Each month after that it will get a 10% increase in value. It is an ideal way to store funds if you plan to take a 3+ month hiatus.
Just a note, this is not guaranteed, I expect that sometime in the next two years it will level out 1 as it becomes more economical to buy gems with real money to exchange for gold. My guess is that this will happen when 1g = $0.08. (currently $0.11, because this is an exponential curve a small decrease in $ will take an ever increasing time). As with the previous two types of investment I track this. I have a small bit of research on it.

Spreadsheet.

Here is a copy of the spreadsheet I use to track all of these. Link.


I hope this overview helps everyone involved.
If you want to hear more of my ramblings there is a subscribe box in the top right.
Also I am a bit surprised that I posted twice in one day, new record!


  1. Two years on it actually has leveled out.