When to hold

"Stable" might be too strong a word when I can't tell you with any confidence what the market will be doing this afternoon, but the initial round of mineral speculation seems to have run its course and the market is starting to catch up. A few days ago the minerals for a raven cost 158, and hulls were selling for 140. Today the mins cost 154 and hulls are going for 147. In that market things will probably equalize inside a week, provided minerals hold still for that long.

In the capital market, things are slower.

I direct your attention to the naglfar. There are 10 on the forge market, and the second most expensive is priced at 2105 million. The cost to build a naglfar is 2093 million.

What's happening here is that the ships on the market were built with minerals bought before the mineral spike, and the nine lowball sell orders are people pricing them to sell instead of thinking ahead. Unless mineral prices collapse - which I deem unlikely - it is a certainty that naglfar prices will rise. Probably by a lot.

For this reason, right now I am holding a bunch of ships which were built with minerals purchased before the price spike, waiting for sell orders of this type to be exhausted and prices to rise. This will allow me to achieve absurd margins, just like I did after crucible. A few hulls (mostly carriers) seem to have found their new sale price, but most ships move slowly -- even if no new ones were being put on the market, I would expect it to take at least half a month for the low naglfar orders to clear out.

For your comfort and convenience I have clipped a bit out of my spreadsheet to show you the state of things.

Fake edit: 'Sale price' here should really read 'market price.'

For reference, I consider a margin of less than about 20% to be unacceptably low. #Iamtheonepercent