Stacmon Market AAR

[Gil Winchester]

Howdy everyone, Altair here (as Gil). Now that the market experiment has been running for about 45 days or so, I felt like it was a good time to create an AAR and talk about what went well, what didn’t go so well, and ideas for the future. I’m also making this now because I’ll be scaling back the level of commitment to Stacmon in particular over the next few weeks so I can focus on trading in general, rather than being tethered between Stacmon and Jita pretty much all the time. Note that I’m not sure of the best ways to analyze market transaction history, but if there’s something convenient I can use after the fact, I’d be interested in exploring that for a more detailed analysis.

The Good
First and foremost, the beginning of the experiment injected a crucial level of competition into Stacmon, resulting in lower prices for consumers— the vast majority of which were Unistas. Even on items that were dead (no listings), I usually set prices around 25% over Jita Sell, to account for the inevitable undercutters that usually follow when something ends up being profitable enough that it shows up on some nerd’s script telling them where to sell things. Regardless, the great thing about lower prices is that if you don’t need to sell that particular item, you can just sit on the same price for weeks or months, while you force the other seller to deal with the hassle of keeping it in stock, barely selling for a profit, and so on. Which is a pretty good side effect when it’s just one person managing everything!

Secondly, we have the great word-of-mouth and interest that the experiment generated. I saw quite a few mentions of the market in the general in-game chat, and I wasn’t even paying these people (or anyone, really) to talk about it! I think that helped a fair bit, though I’d love to somehow do a breakdown of all my market transactions in Stac X to see what % were from Unistas. This also had the side effect of informing Unistas that weren’t on Discord about the experiment, which allowed for some expansion beyond the items I had listed with the help of a few traders.

Third, the decision to utilize the Stacmon X station allowed for greater visibility on who Unistas were buying their items from, as only a handful of other people used this station (at least on the items I had listed). This also allowed me to more effectively compete against Eden Trade on the items we both had listings of, as he is based out of Stacmon VII (or VIII, I forget). This meant that unlike the Uni Buyback traders having their stock bought out completely by Eden Trade in Stacmon, nothing I listed suffered the same fate— at least from Eden Trade.

Of course, not everything went well, and so we have the following section (in no particular order).

The Bad
First, I had underestimated how much hauling a project of this scope would require on an-ongoing basis. At the time, I only really had a Sunesis and some unreliable T1 haulers, so this was something that crept up after some items sold out. And because PushX can take anywhere from 3-6 days to finally push your stuff somewhere, if I wanted to relist something that had sold out overnight, I would have to make the trip to and from Jita myself to ensure timely availability for buyers. That meant a lot of tedium and risk, depending on what was going on.

The second issue I observed had to do with the limitations of a single trader. As Altair was my main at the time, I soon discovered that if I wanted to sell my gas or escalation loot in Jita, I would have to make the trips to and from Jita myself. However, being active in two different regional markets (even with Jita only comprising of ~5% of my orders at most) meant a fair bit of burnout with my daily order updates. I was also not using a website or anything to track if I had been undercut, because one of my earliest trading observations was that it’s fine to not win everything everywhere all at once. This single trader limitation also came up when encountering local competition, as some people were especially desperate to sell items— to the point that they’d list 3 different orders just to undercut me. With the market experiment not accounting for this and aiming for a more thorough (i.e. wide) approach, this meant that I was not as able to respond to these kinds of dedicated and insignificant undercuts.

The third issue, of course, has to do with the profitability. While I myself saw quite a bit of market activity, I do not think it was enough for a market module to pay for itself. This is unfortunate, of course, but further details about this can be explored whenever CCP releases February’s economic report and we can compare it with January or December’s for Placid. And though I myself saw good activity, others who chipped in with their own listings on things like Large ammo and whatnot, did not enjoy similar activity.

Summary
Overall, I consider the market to be a success. The surge in competition meant that for the items I had listings on, prices were either reestablished in the case of dead items or prices were slashed, leading to a general benefit to the customer. While there might not be enough activity for a market to be self-sustaining in terms of profit, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing if we look at a future Stacmon Market (whether based out of a structure or a NPC station) as being a way to keep prices low for Unistas in the area. By simply having enough capital in reserve stockpiles and active listings forcing small-time undercutters to sell below the prices we set, we can keep prices low without worrying as much if something sells.

Of course, a project of that magnitude would require having enough capital, traders, haulers, and producers, but I do believe it would be a large benefit to have something comprehensive like that set up in Stacmon. Even starting small, such as with 3 traders with hauling/producing support from the Uni could be enough to cover the various consumables and then some. Maybe someday…

The Future
Although I’ll be scaling back the Stacmon Market in the coming weeks, that doesn’t mean I’m done trading. Instead, I’ll be managing a new investment fund that most of the original investors have already signed on with. Those that chose to opt out have been refunded, and interest was paid out to everyone. If you’re interested, feel free to check out the corresponding thread on Discord: https://discord.com/channels/3014963900 ... 4440825003