General Can we have the option of short-selling the markets?

[CMDR Correa]

I imagine it would add a complete new dynamics to trading and gameplay in the game. What would you think?

--EDIT--
Short-selling as in: Selling an amount of commodities you don't have for a certain price, and then, rebuying those commodities for a lower price to close the operation and hopefully profit.

 

[varonica]

I imagine it would add a complete new dynamics to trading and gameplay in the game. What would you think?

--EDIT--
Short-selling as in: Selling an amount of commodities you don't have for a certain price, and then, rebuying those commodities for a lower price to close the operation and hopefully profit.

So, cheat to get money? You realise short sellers are anathema to markets and often destroy the business they are short selling.

 

[CMDR Correa]

So, cheat to get money? You realise short sellers are anathema to markets and often destroy the business they are short selling.

Ooh but it's only evolution! (cues in Pearl jam song...) It would be very fun and funny! People short-selling like, 500 Musgravite to buy an FC only to realize they'll have to payback real soon or run the risk of rampant debt and have to sell their FC to cover the debt? LOL!!! Plus, in a galaxy of pirates and slavers, short-sellers are a-must!!

 

[metatheurgist]

Short selling shouldn't even be a thing irl, keep it outta the game.

 

[FrogsFriend]

Don't 'Source and deliver' missions allow you to do something like that. They offer you a high price for the goods based on the galactic average price but you can go and source them at a much lower than average price, making a much larger profit than the mission implied.

 

[Factabulous]

Don't 'Source and deliver' missions allow you to do something like that. They offer you a high price for the goods based on the galactic average price but you can go and source them at a much lower than average price, making a much larger profit than the mission implied.

And if you take a Wing variant on your own then you can (and people often do) get caught out by it

So it's already in the game

/thread

 

[[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos]

Enron Dangerous.

 

[CMDR Correa]

Short selling shouldn't even be a thing irl, keep it outta the game.

Piracy, crime, murder and slavery also shouldn't be but here we are, aren't we? When playing a game, no one really cares if the real-life morals of liberal free-market capitalism are lacking. That never entered into it. If these things mattered we could throw a huge chunk of the gameplay elements into the garbage along with it. I only think it would be an interesting mechanic to the game since very few games model the market behavior, or at least its mechanics, with that degree of realism. Most are just buying and selling. To be honest, I don't know of any game that models other elements beyond that. Maybe there's a technical reason, maybe not...

And if you take a Wing variant on your own then you can (and people often do) get caught out by it

So it's already in the game

/thread

I don't think this is the same thing because the goods are conditioned to commodity/amount the mission demands, even then, it is easier to just mine or piracy the stuff needed if you don't know of a cheap place nearby. With short selling you could actually do the trade the moment you spot it without having to actually look for a mission that demands the commodity you saw for a lower than average price 15 systems ago.

 

[[VR] DDM_Reaper20]

As long as there are appropriate ramifications if a CMDR fails to deliver the goods . . . why not. (By "appropriate" I mean fines that really hurt, and possibly, risking the faction's ire...)

 

[Ted Striker]

Let's do it

 

[Speedcuffs]

And if you take a Wing variant on your own then you can (and people often do) get caught out by it

So it's already in the game

/thread

I do so love those threads!

 

[Starshot_Jigawatts]

I'm not again the concept buuuut, it's just way too exploitable in Elite. Fleet carrier captain could stock up on something, then go influence the BGS somewhere and make a fortune. Also we can all just pull up Inara to check prices on anything galaxy-wide, so how would this work exactly?

 

[Vedmo]

There isn’t an investment market in the game to begin with, but I suppose they could sell future contracts on commodities with the current market.

This would turn into someone finding (or creating) the perfect BGS storm to get optimal prices for a commodity, then completely buying out the option, giving them whatever time increment the contract was under to fulfill the order at top pay. The problem is we have a volatile real time market that while connected in ways, isn't bound to an exchange or board of trade that standardizing current prices, so the idea of trading on potential future prices is made moot by the wide variety of real time markets that offer broad price fluctuations and take the risk out of the trade. There is no question of availability of commodities at a desirable buy or sell price in the present, much less the future, to fulfill your contract with. This is all assuming you are actually delivering the goods as well, if it simply meant flying to a station and seeing a demand for 10k biowaste at 100cr/ton, buying that order, then flying to another station selling it at 10cr/ton to "fulfill" the order, then you have a strait up zero risk credit producing machine.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

The first problem with introducing a derivatives market is that the bubble is large enough in terms of systems and tiny enough in terms of transit time that you could basically always buy the goods somewhere within a few credits of the lowest possible price. So you couldn't possibly lose on the deal.

The second problem with introducing a derivatives market is that when you can get paid 20 times the purchase price for shipping the goods five minutes to the next system over (in certain circumstances) it's hard to imagine a possible derivatives contract where the opportunity cost of storing the goods for a day while waiting for the price to change wouldn't actually make it completely worthless.



That said, if you want to try a bit of futures trading - on a long position rather than a short one - buy a bunch of goods that you think will be higher price the next tick before you log out, sell them when you log in, if you get it right (I can think of several guaranteed-win long positions you could take) you'll make a profit without leaving the hangar. Though not as much a profit as if you'd bought the goods, and sold them in the next system over instead, of course.

EDIT: and if you're interested in RPing an economist or stockbroker, come and join us researching the various factors which affect market pricing. The basics are pretty straightforward, but there's weird effects on some goods which are harder to explain. (You won't make any in-game credits doing this you couldn't have got a hundred times over doing something else)

 

[CMDR Correa]

Let's do it
View attachment 212104

OOoooh dude you just lost the chance to go: Palpatine says: "Do it!"


Regarding the punishment I saw in other comments....
Short-selling does not come without debt, so the cmdr would be indebted by the amount of commodities shorted. Him having to buy the same amount back to close debt, now, this leaves the problem of enforcing this "buy-back".
I thought (veery loosely) about the faction sending mercs to exert the debt (with increasing degrees of challenge up to engineered pirates) on failure to pay. Those mercs would have cross-borders jurisdiction since they're at service of the galactic market.
The debt could grow overtime on failure to pay until when its value was equal to the cmdr assets (or some of them) at what point these assets would be seized and sold to cover debt (leaving him with a Sidewinder mwahahaha).

Now, concerning the way the system would work in the game I was thinking about a really simplified version of actual short-selling. Basically you would short, I don't know, 100 Gold at 50k credits at a market somewhere. That also generates a debt of 100 Gold in you name. You then get your 5m credits you got by shorting Gold and do what you want with it. Only now, you have to source 100 Gold from somewhere (here's the good part: no one really cares where you'd get it!) and pay back the market or risk facing fleets of engineered bounty-hunters or losing your own fleet to the "IRS". ohohoho we could make the defaulted Cmdr bounty incurr a bounty the same value as his debt!!

 

[CMDR Correa]

The first problem with introducing a derivatives market is that the bubble is large enough in terms of systems and tiny enough in terms of transit time that you could basically always buy the goods somewhere within a few credits of the lowest possible price. So you couldn't possibly lose on the deal.

The second problem with introducing a derivatives market is that when you can get paid 20 times the purchase price for shipping the goods five minutes to the next system over (in certain circumstances) it's hard to imagine a possible derivatives contract where the opportunity cost of storing the goods for a day while waiting for the price to change wouldn't actually make it completely worthless.



That said, if you want to try a bit of futures trading - on a long position rather than a short one - buy a bunch of goods that you think will be higher price the next tick before you log out, sell them when you log in, if you get it right (I can think of several guaranteed-win long positions you could take) you'll make a profit without leaving the hangar. Though not as much a profit as if you'd bought the goods, and sold them in the next system over instead, of course.

EDIT: and if you're interested in RPing an economist or stockbroker, come and join us researching the various factors which affect market pricing. The basics are pretty straightforward, but there's weird effects on some goods which are harder to explain. (You won't make any in-game credits doing this you couldn't have got a hundred times over doing something else)

That would be a good way to play the BGS, ngl.

 

[Speedcuffs]

Debtors prison at Beagle Point.

 

[Vetinari]

Short-selling as in: Selling an amount of commodities you don't have for a certain price

Thats a description of fraud, not short selling

Short selling is where I 'borrow' some stock, sell them at market value and buy them back at a cheaper price and return them to the owner. They get a commission and I keep the profit. If the price goes up they still get a commission and I lose my investment buying the stock back at a higher price.

Who in the game is lending you the stock and why? And why not just buy it at a low price and sell it at high? Theres more than one market in ED and the prices vary greatly. Stocks are the same price at one time.

It is a toxic practice in RL. I dont actually see how it would work in ED in the first place but it could certainly become a toxic BGS tactic if it did work

 

[Starshot_Jigawatts]

Short selling is where I 'borrow' some stock, sell them at market value and buy them back at a cheaper price and return them to the owner. They get a commission and I keep the profit. If the price goes up they still get a commission and I lose my investment buying the stock back at a higher price. So I hire "journalists" and "experts" to write articles and go on TV saying the company I'm short-selling is doomed, so the price falls. That way I damn well guarantee I don't lose money.

Fixed that explainer for you

 

[CMDR Correa]

Thats a description of fraud, not short selling

Short selling is where I 'borrow' some stock, sell them at market value and buy them back at a cheaper price and return them to the owner. They get a commission and I keep the profit. If the price goes up they still get a commission and I lose my investment buying the stock back at a higher price.

Who in the game is lending you the stock and why? And why not just buy it at a low price and sell it at high? Theres more than one market in ED and the prices vary greatly. Stocks are the same price at one time.

It is a toxic practice in RL. I dont actually see how it would work in ED in the first place but it could certainly become a toxic BGS tactic if it did work

You didn't read the rest of the thread did you? Especially the "debt" part.
Also, there IS no stock market on ED, also also, ED is a game and in no way supposed to simulate the legal framework that supports today's makets. It is not a game about Jurisprudence... ... ... and... ...
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You know what?
You imperials are all the same!