RuneScape talk:Grand Exchange Market Watch/Common Trade Index

Beginning Discussion
This is a general forum for discussions about the Common Trade Index of the Grand Exchange.

Feel free to suggest items that perhaps ought to be added or removed from this index, however try to keep the following ideas in mind when suggestions are added:


 * Items should be traded in large volumes by players on Runescape... through the Grand Exchange and on the various other trading forums, including Worlds 1,2,3,4,5 and 6, as well as trade exchange pages on various boards on fansites and the official RS forum.
 * Items should play a key component to common experience in working on a skill or ability.
 * Preference to include an item will apply to its use in an under represented skill on this index. In other words, no single skill should be over represented in this index (such as smithing for ores).  The creation of a new skill by Jagex on Runescape is in particular a useful time to suggest a new item for consideration on this index.  Over represented skills may result in an item being removed from the list.  No single list of items is going to be a perfect representation of all of the skills, but this is a goal, not a requirement.
 * By the nature of these items, they will likely be "consumable" items that can be used to further a skill and be "used up" while performing that skill. An item that a player/character would only buy just one of during their entire career on Runescape (unless they die) should have a much stronger reason for exclusion in this list over something that is consumable.

Also remember that this index is intended to represent the overall health of the Runescape economy, and to provide a hard number that can be used to suggest rising prices, inflation, or deflation. Rare items should not be included in this index, as an independent "rare item" index is going to document the rise and fall of that particular group of items. I'm just establishing the "beginning rules" for this index, but take nearly everything I write here with a grain of salt. Everything is fair game, and we are all trying to help build this together.

I hope that in time this index will be of value to all players on Runescape. --Robert Horning 16:14, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * In bullet 4 - "a much stronger reason for inclusion" - did you mean exclusion? It contradicts what you say in the previous paragraph otherwise? Pointy 17:43, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Remember, this is just some guidelines and suggestions that I think make sense, but I'm willing to discuss them and try to come up with some "rules" that can help out otherwise.  I did edit the above paragraph to reflect what I intended.... and I forgot my sig on the above list of principles here.  Thanks for pointing this problem out!  --Robert Horning 16:14, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

A raw food item, probably shark or lobster, should be added to the index to represent fishing and cooking. Also, I'm not sure gold bars are traded that heavily. Skill 01:07, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Seconded. I would favor lobsters. --Dionisio 05:35, 15 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Gold bars are used in jewelry, and with the opening of the Grand Exchange, I can't imagine anybody at the moment using gold ore instead of bars for crafting jewelry. I may be mistaken, and it may just be a temporary market condition to have gold ore selling (at a stable price I might add, going neither up nor down) for nearly twice the amount as gold bars.  This is really interesting and I can't really explain it (other than perhaps some macros and clueless individuals).  Gold bars are the only bars not worth more than the price of the respective ores at the moment.
 * BTW, What do you think about using cowhides instead of gold bars as something relevant to Crafting? --Robert Horning 01:22, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) Yeah, cowhides and dragonhides are used more often in crafting most likely. A bit off topic, but looking at the formula used to calculate the index wouldn't it be affected if an item were taken off? Skill 01:35, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * As a note, I've modified the formula that is used for performing the calculations on this index. The "result" hasn't changed, but I've reorganized the equation algebraicly to include a standard "divisor" that allows for adding or removing items from the list.  To understand how I'm creating this weird number, see: DJIA divisor.  I'm using a very similar formula here, but I'm using a weighted average of the prices (moving item price to a base line 100 points).  I hope this makes sense.  --Robert Horning 20:25, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Gold ore is a popular smithing route - if you use the Family Crest gauntlets you get double the xp per ore (about 56) which makes it fast to train. That might explain why the bars sell for less than the ores - all the smithing xp's gone. As for adding or removing it from the list, I'm neutral. Pointy 11:52, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, gold ore is not a factor in Runescape Economy. As long as Smithing gauntlets exist gold bars are simply a by-product of the smithing skill and will always sell for the minimun price (210 is minimun fixed price at GE). Without the artificial limitation price of the gold bars would go even lower (it was 150 before GE). Instead, I would vote for the Prayer Potion which is a good indicator for Farming and Herblore. Vaskor 22:36, 7 January 2008 (UTC)Vaskor
 * I don't think gold bars ought to be included on any commonly traded items list, as they don't sell at the minimum price, indicating there's no demand for them at all. Uncut gems of some description, or some kind of dragonhide, might be a better indicator. Willfir1 23:06, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't say there is "no demand" for gold bars.... as I just purchased 1k of them yesterday for some of my own crafting needs. The problem here isn't a lack of demand, but rather a lack of movement in the grand exchange due to Jagex's insistence upon a price floor that IMHO doesn't make sense.  Yes, I don't think the price of gold bars would drop too much further if you can smith them into gold bowls or other items, but it is currently just a little bit too high in price right now to be useful to people who use gold bars (like myself).
 * If this price floor is ever removed (due to somebody at JagexHQ getting a clue about this issue or at least getting consistent with price floors on other items), gold bars are so commonly used on such a wide variety of items that I can see it being very useful to know about the price of gold bars. They certainly are not an "end product" like mithril kite shields.  The only problem is that Jagex doesn't want to see crafters make a little bit of money off of their work, as certainly people smithing gold bars don't seem to mind selling gold bars at a slightly lower price than 210 coins each.  --Robert Horning 12:03, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Additional Items
The CTI shouldn't be limited to so few items, for instance some of these items definitely have major impact on the RuneScape economy but aren't listed in the index:
 * Flax/Bow strings
 * Sharks, Lobsters, Monkfish
 * Magic logs, Willow logs
 * Ranarr weeds/Prayer potions
 * Red chinchompas/Steel arrows
 * Death runes, Blood runes, Law runes, Chaos runes, Cosmic runes
 * Barrows equipment
 * Treasure Trail rewards
 * Discontinued and holiday items

... and there's more... We need a sampling from each of these categories to balance it out. 01:30, 11 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I didn't want any one single skill to be over represented, so adding in all of the high level runes is perhaps going over the top. Adding Death runes to the mix may be a good idea, however, as the way Death runes are used is substantially different from how Nature runes are typically used.  Mainly combat vs. manufacturing skills.  For combat runes, which would be better:  Death, Chaos, or Blood runes?  Deaths are the highest F2P combat rune available, and are sold in stores.  Chaos runes are complicated to craft (not impossible) and Blood runes have their own special exception in terms of how they are crafted as there isn't a Blood alter.


 * As for rare and discontinued items, that is something I'm not so sure should be in the list. I know it is a significant part of the Runescape economy, but they really behaves substantially different from these other kinds of commonly traded items, and are treated differently by even Jagex in terms of price floors and ceilings.  I thought about setting up a rare item index to address these items explicitly, but I'm still open to suggestions.  Again, I don't want to over represent rares in this index either, but a particularly common "rare" may be useful to represent that part of the Runescape economy.  --Robert Horning 14:53, 11 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Raw Lobsters, Raw Sharks, Flax, and one set of Barrows equipment should probably be included, as they are very commonly traded.--Andy mci 16:06, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Trade index of day
The prices of all items should be changed daily, otherwise it can't be named index of the day, don't you think ? If some prices are not changing, the trend arrow should be changed to equal and the date of day modified as well, no ? 12:16, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Where here does this say "index of the day"? While certainly updating items on this index may be something that will happen more often than items not on this list, I want to point out that this is a voluntary effort.  If you want to help out here and keep this updated on a daily basis... please help out and do that.  But don't sacrifice family, a career, or some other silly thing to make that happen... unless perhaps you are willing to help out with paying for this sort of prompt service of some sort with real money?


 * I'm not expecting that, and I want to keep this fun.


 * As far as making the trend arrows work without manually following the prices.... I have some ideas on how to get that going, but it isn't going to be quite so trivial. Let's just say, hold on here and don't criticize a work in progress, but try to offer a real solution if you see a problem.


 * What I'm thinking about here is to take advantage of the new "Last" field in the prices and coming up with expanding the template spectrum a bit to help come up with a more automated method up showing price trends for even a full index. If you want more details before I implement this, I'll try to go into this in more detail.  But for now, don't panic.  --Robert Horning 13:59, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * As of today, this index is 107.39... You are right, I am missinterpreting, it is not written index of the day... By the way, I was not criticizing, I was just asking a question... 14:40, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Armour
In the index, there isn't ANY kind of melee armour. I suggest adding something like a full rune set.


 * Unfortunately, since most melee armour is hitting the price floors, I don't see any real benefit to adding that onto this index... yet. I think that is a good idea, on the whole, and eventually something to put on here.


 * I'll refer to my rants on the forums in regards to some indifference on the part of Jagex to fix some critical problems on the Grand Exchange, and I think this is one of them.


 * If you also notice, all of the items in this index are items traded in bulk in one form or another. Often sold and purchased in quantities of 1000's or even more.  While I don't deny that there are some smithers who make 1000's of sets of armor, there usually aren't buyers of 1000's of sets.... which is an endemic problem on Runescape anyway.  IMHO, this is one of the reasons why prices crashed hard right at the opening of the Grand Exchange, and why price floors (an absolute minimum price you can't go below at all) is really gumming up the works with the Grand Exchange.


 * Jagex is also doing some games with the price of sets, from what I've seen and heard from other players who've been tracking them. There used to be a minor arbitrage situation where you could buy up pieces of different sets and sell them as a set for more money... or take a set and break it up and make a profit.  Unfortunately, Jagex hard-pegged the price of sets to be the price of all of the items combined, and doesn't allow the price of a set to float anymore on its own.  With nearly all smithed items at a hard price floor, this makes tracking items like this something very boring... like trying to follow the price of mind runes (another item at a hard price floor).


 * If you think there is some substantial variation on the price of rune armor sets that would warrant some attention, it might be something useful to add to this index. I'm open to the idea, but skeptical that it would be useful.  I removed gold bars from this index explicitly because they hit the hard price floor as well, and (unlike what I was hoping from Jagex customer support) subsequent updates haven't addressed this issue on what could be a major commodity that would go up and down based on player demand.  Tracking gold bars simply won't be useful for tracking the economic health of the Runescape economy.  I hope that I'm wrong to say the same thing about rune armor sets (runite bars, on the other hand, may be something useful to add). --Robert Horning 16:30, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Item Price
Players should only note the medium price, and not the lower and the higher price, otherwise prices index is wrong ! 10:38, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Adding Herblore Items
This is mainly a "heads up" to somebody watching this. Due to improved reporting on a number of items and a significant hole in this index in regards to herblore, I added several herblore items, a couple more fishing items, and Mithril ore to the index. The mith ore was mainly added so mining/smithing was better represented.

I would like to add Dragon bones and Sharks to this list eventually, and other reasonable suggestions are always welcome. The main point of adding those items is to help balance out some member items. Certainly when summoning is created, several items from that skill will eventually be added as well. --Robert Horning 23:00, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I think Snapdragon and Ranarr always follow the same pattern in the price fluctuations, so only one (Ranarr) may be left in the index and remain representative for Herblore. Sharks and Dragon Bones would be great additions though. Vaskor 05:41, 14 January 2008 (UTC)Vaskor

I will update daily
I will update everyday so nobody else worry about it. I will update all between about 16:00 and 21:00. If anyone can tell me when is the best time to update, like when the prices are changed that would be gratefully recieved. King Dharok9 16:40, 1 February 2008 (UTC)