Basically, how this works is we look at charts mostly, we find stable items that flit up and down and yet don't spike or crash, all we do is buy at a price roughly 25-50% of bottom price and middle and then sell back at middle price, following the natural contours and always making money.
This has two effects, it ensures there is always stock being bought & sold and keeps things steady, it is when one of these crucial systems breaks down you have rapidly rising prices or crashing prices.
This is an example of a good item for our purposes of stable merchanting:
As you can see it has very common high and low points meaning it is possible simply to trade near to those and constantly make money, no matter how slow.
This is also an example of a good item for our purposes of stable merchanting at least before it started rising at the end of November, when it drops down to 5400 it will be good to buy again:
You will see two lines pointed out, the bottom green one is where you buy, and the top red one is where you sell...of course whether you do this is up to you entirely but it is simply meant to illustrate how this decision is reached by identifying the best prices, this also only shows the middle price, often for black chaps for instance the buy and sell price will go beyond this as people buy for minimum and maximum yet the majority trade around the median price. How you choose to price your items is up to you but you will always get more if you choose to cut profits ;)
Right now the price is soaring way out of control for no reason, this is indicative of a clan having gotten hold of it and buying them out, do not buy when this happens, otherwise you stand to simply lose your money. Simply move onto something else for the duration.
If something rises for no reason, such as an update to cause it be very careful...you are already too late to the party, and you will not get any until everyone dumps the whole lot and you will stagger around under the weight of your impending bankrupcy. A good technique however is to notice things rising and buying items that supply those, such as buying ranarr seeds or super restore potions if prayer potions rise.
The best types of items to buy are high volume and low priced goods, a whip may very well jump 25k in a day, but all you need are 25,000 iron knifes bought at minimum and then sold one coin piece higher to make the same effect, which far greater safety to your bank balance; trade low, trade many is the key to great wealth ;)
Other examples of good items are those that get burnt out often, such as duel rings...they are very cheap, supremely useful and you can get about 10k easily within 4 hours...the general price range to buy is 1600-1650 and to sell you should be looking at 1750-1800.
Tomorrow I will start my list on what will be good to buy and sell through the GE, based on quantity, quality and best of all profit margin but try this just as a starter, if you take a look around at adamant items such as the normal armours you will see some things hitting a floor price, when this happens start buying, the adamant platelegs would be a very good thing to place an order in for before they drop at 3600 :)
Try this just as an example, various adamant armours can be bought easily by freeplay as in the next day or two at 3600, don't miss out on your chance to buy as they will go up...they are great for those with little money as you can buy upto 600 per day and that will only cost you a 2.16M, but you stand to make about 35k per 100 traded when you sell at mid price a day or two later...then simply switch to a new item.
It does not sound like much, but I started with 30k once and now have 450M+
It all adds up :)
By the way, my ingame Runescape name is "Cookies_Spam" and my clanchat is always open for you to take a look in and sometimes we even discuss trading though we never advocate buying for maximum price, if you follow the simple rules that will be outlined here over the next few weeks you won't need to use manipulation clans :)
There is one other thing I wish to note, most of the time I will not be doing the same item as other people, it makes no sense for me to buy a maximum of 600 adamant plate bodies a day for 2.3M when I have 200x that money...I usually do higher value items such as onyx bolts (8k each), high level seeds (30-45k each) or various food items or jewelry. This is not to say sometimes we wont do the same items if they are good, I just wish to make it clear from the outset that I have nothing to gain in the game from you making money, except the knowledge that you are another I have helped :)
Our usual profit margin is generally 3-8% every day, it sounds like a tiny amount when you think you will only make 30k-50k from 1M investment, but change that into 100M over time and you will be regularly seeing an 8M+ return :)
An item I recently spotted dropped from 6200 to 5300, at which point we all fell upon it like a pack of rabid wolves as we had been watching it fall, it shot back up in price to 5900-6000 which is what we sold at...I personally made 18M from that and people had similar success, just on smaller scales lol
Anyways, there is no pressure, come to my clanchat, have a talk with me or one of my friends, get a hint, noodles, don't noodles...why be so concerned with what was and what will be? ;)
~Sparhawke
