Making Sense of Market History. With Images!

AckerZ

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Hey Everyone o/,

Looking for some pointers on whether I am understanding the Market Value History window correctly. I have numbered the questions as I go down so it is easier to answer if you are able to. Many thanks in advance if you choose to help explain this difficult topic.

So Looking at the Market Value History Graph for Basic Leather Extractor set to the 'Week'

hfJOIDQ.png


I assumed the peaks and troughs marked by the red arrows indicate actual sales, and when I hover over those points as shown below the data that comes up shows the 'exact' sale amount + the MU for that sale.

I2El8l0.png


So here logic follows that what I am seeing at 18.30 is one sale for 24.39 at an MU of 275%, but that is not possible as you can only buy in integers on Auction. [Question 1] So obviously that cannot be the actual values but a moving average between sale points with the exact sale value & mu being a pixel small point on this graph?

So based on the values given above by only the Mark Up data for this week I'd be looking at an average MU of 195.17% if I was planning to sell Leather Extractors.

If I do the same thing for Leather Extractors but for the Sales Graph

IqsfpCf.png


We have the same situation a non-exact outcome when hovering what I believe is the peak. [Question 2] Assuming it is the same situation where I am not 100% accurately placed on the actual sale pixel I can gather from this data that if I was to sell a '20.36ped' stack a good target Mark-Up would be 254%?

[Question 3] So then when you overlay the two charts and assuming we hypothetically have a 20ped stack of extractors would it make sense to look in this range (highlighted in red) to figure out what MU target you should be aiming for with a 20ped stack?

7rc84GY.png



[Question 4] If so and if all the assumptions I am making so far have been correct does that mean every peak or trough (end point indicating a sale) that falls in that range indicates that an order was completed at that value and at that Mark Up? So it would make sense for anyone looking to sell a 20 ped stack of extractors to look in that range and see if there are enough 'sale points' to go ahead and list their stack at that MU?

This is where it gets difficult for me.

If both lines (Mark Up & Sales) pair up on the graph within that range it appears that a sale was made within the value range (20ped) and within the MU range (240%), what then follows when the Mark Up line hits 300% while the Sale line hits 5ped(shown in red below)?

When I hover over the two points it gives two wildly different results of ~30ped @ 300%MU & ~1.69ped @ 152%MU, despite appearing to be the same time of the same day.


zD1Sifv.png



This throws me off massively and makes me think my previous assumptions about what these lines mean is wrong. [Question 5] How can the MU line and the Sale line which are meant to be showing averages while at the same point in time show two completely different results in the tooltip? Too say I am confused is a massive understatement.


My end goal here is to be able to figure out what is a good price to list my stacks at based off previous sales data alone. I opted not to use more popular items like Oils as that data is even more confusing for me with ridiculous outliers showing Mark Up up to 10x what the average is, as shown below in the final image. If anyone could help me understand what I am missing here I will make sure I gift you something worthwhile in game (nothing too crazy though).


vl1IZ33.png


Logic would dictate based on the MU graph that I want to sell a >200ped stack between 102-105% yet 1.5k ped sold for 128 ped. [Question 7] This is planet data I am looking at here not global data?.. I yield.
 
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This is a great question! I have also wondered about this since I started playing this game, but I given up on figuring this out. Hopefully someone can shed some light on this.
From my own understanding, I believe when you hover over and the info is just the info on that pixel point in the graph and does not show the actual transaction history. I just used the market history and a general guide for selling my items. I also compare with other sellers. Check other seller's price and how long it's been on auction. They really should fix it. They did a decent job with the chart on the entropia exchange and the graph actually works could still use more improvement. Not sure why they can't do the same thing to these items.
 
This is where it gets difficult for me.

If both lines (Mark Up & Sales) pair up on the graph within that range it appears that a sale was made within the value range (20ped) and within the MU range (240%), what then follows when the Mark Up line hits 300% while the Sale line hits 5ped(shown in red below)?

When I hover over the two points it gives two wildly different results of ~30ped @ 300%MU & ~1.69ped @ 152%MU, despite appearing to be the same time of the same day.


zD1Sifv.png



This throws me off massively and makes me think my previous assumptions about what these lines mean is wrong. [Question 5] How can the MU line and the Sale line which are meant to be showing averages while at the same point in time show two completely different results in the tooltip? Too say I am confused is a massive understatement.


My end goal here is to be able to figure out what is a good price to list my stacks at based off previous sales data alone. I opted not to use more popular items like Oils as that data is even more confusing for me with ridiculous outliers showing Mark Up up to 10x what the average is, as shown below in the final image. If anyone could help me understand what I am missing here I will make sure I gift you something worthwhile in game (nothing too crazy though).


vl1IZ33.png


Logic would dictate based on the MU graph that I want to sell a >200ped stack between 102-105% yet 1.5k ped sold for 128 ped. [Question 7] This is planet data I am looking at here not global data?.. I yield.

What I'm seeing mostly in your post here is that you are making the incorrect assumption that the tooltip is telling you something about the data on this specific market graph when in fact it is not. When I first started using these graphs I encountered the same confusion but eventually figured out that the tooltip is just telling you your position on the graph, not the sales.

It's just a tooltip, it just tells you something about where the cursor is on the actual graph, but it doesn't know anything about the lines and the actual sales represented, just the position on the graph and the scales being used on that graph, that is all.
 
I wouldn't even bother trying to understand the sales data on extractors lol. You picked the worst group of commodities to try and study. Just sell your stack of whatever item for cheaper MU than any stack size smaller than yours, and you will do fine.
Lets not get started on Animal hide....
 
I wouldn't even bother trying to understand the sales data on extractors lol. You picked the worst group of commodities to try and study. Just sell your stack of whatever item for cheaper MU than any stack size smaller than yours, and you will do fine.
Lets not get started on Animal hide....

Extractors aren’t really much different than other stack items. It’s really only BPs where the graphs fall apart, namely on the sales portion (and MU for specific QR).
 
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What I'm seeing mostly in your post here is that you are making the incorrect assumption that the tooltip is telling you something about the data on this specific market graph when in fact it is not. When I first started using these graphs I encountered the same confusion but eventually figured out that the tooltip is just telling you your position on the graph, not the sales.

It's just a tooltip, it just tells you something about where the cursor is on the actual graph, but it doesn't know anything about the lines and the actual sales represented, just the position on the graph and the scales being used on that graph, that is all.

Haha, that actually makes it all make sense. The lines are correct then but the tooltips are not? So in the example above when the peak and troughs were at 300%mu and ~1.69ped it means something sold at 300% around the 1.69ped value? That makes much more sense and makes the lines work now. MA need to fix those tooltips - unnecessarily confusing.

Thanks again Legends! I'm on Caly today if you are about I'll give you some L armor bps for the help.
 
I wouldn't even bother trying to understand the sales data on extractors lol. You picked the worst group of commodities to try and study. Just sell your stack of whatever item for cheaper MU than any stack size smaller than yours, and you will do fine.
Lets not get started on Animal hide....

Thanks for the advice, makes the most sense as a selling strategy.

What's wrong with animal hides out of interest?
 
Haha, that actually makes it all make sense. The lines are correct then but the tooltips are not? So in the example above when the peak and troughs were at 300%mu and ~1.69ped it means something sold at 300% around the 1.69ped value? That makes much more sense and makes the lines work now. MA need to fix those tooltips - unnecessarily confusing.

Thanks again Legends! I'm on Caly today if you are about I'll give you some L armor bps for the help.

Yeah so when you want to know more precisely what the values are, you can move your cursor to the green point that you are curious about, but then for the tt amount, you have to move your cursor down to the blue line (or up) to see that value and have the full picture.

Don't forget that sometimes these points on the graphs are an aggregate of several sales, not just 1 sale. The market history program merges these willy-nilly and there isn't really any way to know, except for unlimited items where it shows the number of sales as opposed to the total tt value.

Awesome, I'm going to bed now but I'll be on in 8 hours or so. See you then o/
 
Its a very archaic system actualy, meanwhile it's so bad they made a totally "new" market charter for the deed system.

If my understanding of those graphs is right (I certainly hope it is, otherwise it doesnt make any sense to me) the tooltip is showing you all the stats for all the lines in that specific grid position. Is this useful? Kind of, but not really. So What I do is check both for curiosity (you can see how people manipulate certain items with it too). Notice on the oils for example: the peaks on the "markup" line coincide with great depressions on the "sales" line, which makes me conclude it was someone who sold a smaller stack of items for an unreasonable markup, for whatever reason.

One thing worth noting is if the markup line is super volatile, then it gets super hard to check the sales line for an accurate number.

What I'm seeing mostly in your post here is that you are making the incorrect assumption that the tooltip is telling you something about the data on this specific market graph when in fact it is not. When I first started using these graphs I encountered the same confusion but eventually figured out that the tooltip is just telling you your position on the graph, not the sales.

It's just a tooltip, it just tells you something about where the cursor is on the actual graph, but it doesn't know anything about the lines and the actual sales represented, just the position on the graph and the scales being used on that graph, that is all.

Only read Legend's message after writing it up :) Reinforcing his statement.
The new market graph system is a lot easier to work with, I don't understand why they don't update the auction market graph with it... But I kinda do understand when the code is made of spaghetti :p
 
Its a very archaic system actualy, meanwhile it's so bad they made a totally "new" market charter for the deed system.

If my understanding of those graphs is right (I certainly hope it is, otherwise it doesnt make any sense to me) the tooltip is showing you all the stats for all the lines in that specific grid position. Is this useful? Kind of, but not really. So What I do is check both for curiosity (you can see how people manipulate certain items with it too). Notice on the oils for example: the peaks on the "markup" line coincide with great depressions on the "sales" line, which makes me conclude it was someone who sold a smaller stack of items for an unreasonable markup, for whatever reason.

One thing worth noting is if the markup line is super volatile, then it gets super hard to check the sales line for an accurate number.



Only read Legend's message after writing it up :) Reinforcing his statement.
The new market graph system is a lot easier to work with, I don't understand why they don't update the auction market graph with it... But I kinda do understand when the code is made of spaghetti :p


Lol yeah much appreciated, hopefully they updated but it makes a lot more sense now people have took the time to explain it.

So many thanks to everyone who contributed.
 
7rc84GY.png

To clarify another possible point of confusion, the fact that you see 20 PED of volume line up with 250% markup is more or less arbitrary. You should think of the green/red price lines as living on a separate graph from the blue/purple volume lines. When the MV History algorithm pastes those two graphs together, it scales the x-axes to match each other, and so you can correlate price and volume data by looking at any specific column of pixels. However, the y-axes cannot be scaled to match as they have different units, so the left y-axis indicates price, and the right y-axis indicates volume, and the decision of how to scale them relative to each other is just an arbitrary choice made by the algorithm. The reason I call it "more or less" arbitrary is because the algorithm does decide this based on some objective criteria; it tries to spread the bulk of the data vertically across the graph so that it fits on screen and is not too cramped, and this could be non-arbitrary and even useful for some sort of analysis, but it's important not to derive more meaning from this relative scaling than is actually present.
 
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