Greedy Goblin

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Speculative titanium

I bought 3 stacks of titanium ore and some titanium bar. They cost 4000G. I hope their price increase during the weekend and I can sell them. However it's pure speculation. The trend is obviously decreasing, as more and more people will finish gearing up, the need for this high-end material will drop, their prices will go down. However I hope that the weekend sellings will overcompensate this effect. If not, I'll have to dump them and suck up the loss.

Usually I advice against such behavior. I still do. If you have 5000G and spend 4000 of it to speculate against the trend based on something so volatile as the weekend issue, you are out of your mind.

Why do I do it than? Because I have ten times more. With the current prices I can gear up for around 20000G, if I add a Signet of Kirin Tor that's another 8K and I'm all set for WotLK. Practically I'll have no more significant expenses until the next expansion. And money will keep coming in.

So I can afford to "experiment" with this money, meaning taking blind luck chances. Is it normal? No. It's the byproduct of the fact that I'm way too rich for my own good. After all taking such chances are still better than buying some completely useless vanity stuff like the Tundra Mammoth or some dragon mount.

It's the same in the real world. If someone has too much money for his own good, he has a tendency to waste it, either in too risky speculations or pure vanity. Is it his fault? No. It's the fault of those who let him be that rich. This amount of wealth cannot be reached by honest work. If I had to do dailies for my (former) 50K with 200G/hour, that's 250 hours of continous, repetitive, mindless farming. I would definitely wouldn't farm so much just to do some gambling with titanium or have a Signet of Kirin Tor. I can do what I do, because mindless people, who did farmed, creating (simulated) value in this game, provided many-many great opportunities for me to take their money.

If you are a young person, you probably sympatizing with leftist movements in real life. You may believe that millionares are evil and selfish and must be stopped somehow, mostly by taxing. Of course they evade the taxes by hiding behind off-shore companies and lawyers. They also support the right-wing media with lot of money to spread the idea that they are working hard and they are very skilled so they deserve their riches.

I can assure you they are lying. They don't work hard, unless you consider talking to each other in a luxury-restaurant "hard". They are not skilled more than anyone who has a university diploma. They are - we are - exactly what the leftist call us: predators who prey on the weak, taking the fruits of their really hard work.

I reveal a big secret to you! I tell you how to reach what leftists from Marx to Cohn-Bendit, from Guevara to Mao wanted to reach but failed miserably. I tell you how can you break the multi-national business empires that corrupt governments and pollute the planet! You can destroy them by stop buying overpriced crystallized fire! It's that simple!

Is it simple? We'll see. The Christmas is coming. As we all know the meaning of this holiday is to visit as many shops as we can and spend as much money (mostly from very expensive credit-card loan) as we can. Is it?

When December the 25th comes, you will see how "easy" it was to break the "evil empire" of millionares.

I have a dream. I have a dream that one day I'll have to do some honest, productive work because I found no mindless sheep to take his money in a minute.

While I wrote this rant, I sold 8 pieces of crystallized fire for 15G each. I bought the eternal fire for 80G. Tell me, is there any hope for my dream?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

No, there isn't. This is the reality of the society we live in FWIW. Yesterday there were 18 Eternal Fires on my horde AH. They were listed for 51g-59.99g each. I bought every single one. I didn't even turn them into more expensive crystallized fires. I simply re-listed them for 79.94g each. This morning before I left for work 10 of them had sold.

18 x avg. 55g = 990g invested
10 x 79.99g = 760 after AH cut

By the time I get home I'm certain all will be sold. That equals roughly a 377g profit for about 3 minutes work. Farming such obscene amounts of money is not possible. Speculation IS the way I've gotten rich. The endless cycle will not stop, however.

I did a /who of Sholazar Basin at peak hours yesterday. 64 people were in that zone. There were only 1196 Horde online total! These are the very people you speak of - the ones who believe they are making money for themselves, but in reality are making money for me.

Cuthbert said...

I think I remember reading that you aren't from the states, and I don't know what the figures are where you live, but in the U.S. the top one percent of wage earners control half of the income in the country. When you look at wealth the picture gets even more startling. The top 1% of households control 40% of the wealth while the bottom 40% of households have virtually no wealth at all.

While hard to get into in a blog, I think that one of the steps to even things out a bit would be to tax capital gains as income. Here in the states the tax rate on capital gains is 15%. That effectively means that people that work for a living are taxed at a higher rate than people that live off of investment income.

For any of the rightwingers that might respond, it is intellectually dishonest to whine about double taxation (it happens all the time) and rich people will still utilize the capital markets, their beds aren't big enough to stuff all their money underneath them.

Funeral said...

I'm personally a frugal WoW player. I supply myself with all my needs, not buying anything in the AH unless it's completely avoidable. This helps me save gold.

I can't seem to break the 5,000g savings mark though. I seem to be facing two major issues. The first being my own "fear" of investing the money I've actually worked hard for into something that may end up causing a loss. As you've said, you can afford to essentially gamble with the market, however if I lose 500g on a bad investment, it hurts. I've managed to catch changes in the market here and there and make a decent profit simply re-selling items, but nothing that can be counted on.

The other issue is that for the most part the AH on my server seems to be populated by mostly smart players. Perhaps it's because of the low server population and the fact that many resources and items are farmed and kept in house by various guilds, but I haven't been able to locate a winning buy/sell strategy. For instance you posted about the killing you're making on the Crystallized and Eternal re-sell plan. On my server Things seem to be very balanced. A single eternal fire sells for 58-60g, the crystallized fires sell for around 5.9g.

I'm keeping my eyes open but until something catches my eye it's the same old grind.