Sunday 18 November 2012

Arbitrage


This is going to be the new project that the Consortium team trials. We’re going to buy off one Auction house to sell on the other. The minimum we intend to make is 35% mark-up excluding AH fees, but this % may need to be a little flexible.

The neutral auction house is where this may grind to a halt. If we get a camper/sniper then we won’t be able to transfer items between factions, so the whole project becomes pointless until they leave.

The minimum an item can be sold for on the Neutral AH is 2 copper to minimise the 15% commission the neutral AH charges.

The Plan
We’re going to setup a toon on the Alliance & Horde side with 1,000 gold each, they will buy cheap items off the Alliance AH to sell on Horde side. We’ll transfer the items across, to our Horde toon and sell them. We will then buy cheap Horde items and transfer them back to Alliance for re-sale. We will then do the same again but investing profits.

The Rules
No crafting, we buy from the AH or Consortium Project (better the gold stays in our pockets than competitors) at Auction House prices for resale.

Example
Let’s say we purchased 1000g of items on Alliance, send to neutral AH, transfer to Horde, Sell on Horde +35%, we lose 5% to AH fees but should have 1300gish for re-investment, purchase goods, send to neutral AH, transfer to Alliance, Sell on Alliance. Should have 1690gish for re-investment.
 
The Problem
 


By trips I mean the gold/goods go from Alliance to Horde to Alliance again.

So after 14 trips we'll have 1.5 Million gold, right!  Nope, after 9 trips it’s going to be hard to find enough items on the either Horde or Alliance side to send back and forth for resale. It's going to slow down substantially at this point, but mathematically it looks impressive.
I will setup the toons during the week and commence the project when the new month for the Consortium Project starts.
 
The Tools
I’ve setup a spreadsheet on google docs if anyone wants to try this out on their own realm. Please report any errors you find.

How it works
1. Download the spreadsheet from the link above and open it.



2. Import data from the Undermine Journal for both factions.
Goto TUJ ->Pick your Realm & faction -> Site -> Market API -> Click CSV.
Copy/Paste to relevant tabs (Alliance & Horde) over the existing/old data.
3. Set % markup you want to achieve on the Arbitrage spreadsheet. A2
4. If you buying on Alliance to sell on Horde, use the drop down box and set the Alliance Column F & J to True (deselect False) or for Horde G & K.
5. Pick what you want to buyout and look at Col L for Alliance (M Horde) for Max price to pay based on % markup.
In the above example Ethereal Shards can be bought on Alliance for 51.25g (Col B) the market average on Horde (Col I) is 75.19g, however current price is 105.75g (Col C)
Max price to pay for Shards is 55.7g (Col L) based on lowest value in Col C or G. Just remeber to reset the filters when you want to swap to the other faction.
You can add items, just put the item name in CoL A, then copy existing data from Col B to K and paste on the same row as the new item. I'm assuming some basic Excel knowledge here.
Living Steel Belt Buckles would be one item to add.

Let me know what you think.


6 comments:

  1. So you are going to buy on one side then move to other,sell it, buy some cheapo mats, move to other so on so forth. I do this often the best way is to be moving items both ways at the same time because different items sell cheap on one side this week and high two days later, so I think you are losing oppritunity but not moving traffic both ways similtaneously.

    There are going to be bots that are camping the neutral especially once they figure out what you are doing. Best way around this to dual box and have your toons at the nuetral ready to go, I do this and still sometimes lose auctions. So I always send some sorta cheapo stuff first like some adamantite ore for instance, if I can move it and no one is trying to snipe then Ill move pets, cards, mounts whatever else that has a high value. Just some late night random thoughts

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    Replies
    1. There's a good guide over at the Consortium http://stormspire.net/consortium-quality-guides/440-guide-monitor-your-competitions-cross-faction-trading-activities-stop-them.html to try and minimise this sort of behavior. Yes you are right, we'll end up moving goods both ways as I doubt I'll find enough items on a daily basis to use up the Horde profits.

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  2. I dont know where to paste in my realms csv. First time user of exel. Could need some help on what collum to paste it in.

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  3. NPS, First open the CSV file. Hold down the left mouse button and click the header for Column A (this will highlight Col A) , then drag across to Column F while holding the left mouse button down(this will highlight Col A-F). Release the mouse button.
    Select copy. Now select the Arbitrage Project spreadsheet (you might have to Alt-Tab to it)
    If the CSV file you downloaded was for Alliance data, then select the Alliance tab down the bottom of the sheet, or Horde tab for Horde data. Once you have selected the relevant tab, click on cell A1 and then click paste. Go back to TUJ then goto the opposite factions data, then download that CSV file and repeat the above.

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  4. For the filters...if you're buying on alliance to sell on horde, you said to mark those 2 columns for alliance as "true" (by deselecting false). So..does that mean that in the horde columns you want to deselect true? or just leave with all boxes marked?

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    Replies
    1. Sorry for my tardy response, I was out of town on business.
      Yes you leave the opposite factions filters set to default(select all)

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