exex current bid/ask (feature request/suggestion?)

[jackpod]

well, current exex displays the best bid/offer and spread of certain products. The quote indicates both spread and price, but missing quantity. without the quantity, this market will be more susceptible to manipulation (arbitrage opportunities, painting/spamming bid/ask book, etc). Even if current quote system cannot display the entire bid/ask orders (i think it'll be the best tho), at least if we can see the best bid/ask price with quantity this practice will make our market more transparent and easier to deal with. Missing quantified bid and offer (you can't quantify without # of items per price) can cause bad budgeting and uncertainty. Maybe order quantity can be subscribed to the people with such interests..

what do you guys think?

[Maul Binder]

i think you miss point though as why they dont do such actions too as then it would promote more aggravation then actually good and everything is for quantity of 1 be it a board ointment gem tool use universal charge or whatever isnt for a bulk quantity of said item so someone may have 1 or may have 100000 of that item on but the price shown is for just 1 of the item or for 1 charge of the tool. if you try to buy more then the alloted prie for that particular item then it only sells you the amount listed at price you willing to pay so if wanted to buy ointments in bulk of 1000 but seller only has 10 it only sells you 10 as that price is what you agreed to and then it would show next lowest price available to continue your purchase. there can be 100 prices for the same objects but it only shows what the person willing to sell or direct buy at highest price is then it readjusts to new price when quantity runs out. So in turn trying to make a quantity display would only create more hassle then way is currently and also take more scripting which i think is far better items to concern with then chaning that system thats been in place for longtime.

[Devlin]

I like the idea of quantity shown... Maybe even show deeper to see what the "next" price is. [exex can be easily used to manipulate prices. Showing quantity and disabling having a buy/sell order up for the same item could fix that a bit.

[Maul Binder]

Another dilemma though with posting a quantity would be like when prices were posted on website and how people undercut easier but it would also promote people to buy out competition more to sell for higher prices so would make it more vet dominated by posting a quantity of the item as well so i think is good way it is personally to keep such from happening.

[Alex]

I can understand why people would like to have the number of x products at y price, however, as in the real world the price of product x (and all others) is determined by supply and demand. Just like stocks, solely the price of a stock is listed and not the number of stocks at x price.

In the example below the current price is 107.25 (here buy and sell are in one), but we dont know how many shares of Apple are available at 107.25 (I guess the daily range could be viewed as the spread in [exex). Maybe 1, maybe 1 million. The price of the share will move according to supply and demand. You do however have the maximum available (5.86bn), which could or could not be included in [exex, which could be useful for planning purposes; however the price needs to be flexible and determined by supply and demand.

In my opinion, it should stay the way it is, to avoid manipulation or arbitrage opportunities. I understand that sometimes you want 1000 of one one thing and need purchase it 10 times at increasing prices to obtain it, but that's what the market is, it allows for decisions to be made, farm it yourself vs. pay the premium.

My 2 cents.

[EndeR]

I have no problem with the current system. I personally would like it if we could see the quantity. But it is not a big deal. I did want to say however... if ur stock broker does not show the quantity at a price, it may be time for a new broker cause mine both of mine do show that info.

[Alex]

I think we need to suggest changes to google finance

[+Nyx]

I am of the opinion that the exex should show the number available for that price. How can one make an educated decision about whether to purchase if one does not know what is available? As Ender said, with stocks, you can find out exactly how many are available so that you can make an informed decision about whether to buy at that price.

In terms of preventing manipulating the exex, +C had previously said that he would make it so that nobody can list items for more than 10% more or 20% less (if I remember correctly) than what's currently available. It'd give one some wiggle room to post a bargain if they wanted to, but not let someone list items for exorbitant prices in hopes of someone making an accidental purchase. That would go a long way toward helping keep the prices balanced without direct pricing by us.

[Alex]

I am of the opinion that the exex should show the number available for that price. How can one make an educated decision about whether to purchase if one does not know what is available?

This works in stocks since the supply is usually millions or billions, a liquid market, with "almost" limitless supply. I am ok with this, might be a little thin for some items possibly.

In terms of preventing manipulating the exex, +C had previously said that he would make it so that nobody can list items for more than 10% more or 20% less (if I remember correctly) than what's currently available.

If this can be coded or implemented I think it would be a great solution. The price of items can still move up and down depending on supply and demand just gradually.

[walter]

I think even if +Colibri does this update on Exex there will be still a lot of room for manipulation, maybe even worse than we have now, and I think it's a waste of +Colibri's time.

Just point this way:
- Placing limits relative to the current price may allow a group of players to artificially put up or down the price of specific commodity, and the limits will make it difficult for the price to return to 'normal' levels. Yes manipulation may have longer effects.
-----If the right price was 50 but it's 15 now, I won't be able to offer 50.
-----Or if the current price is 150 now I can't offer 60 to sell the item to someone.

- If you can see the amount of the best offers, I guess some people might be upset. If they see 1 item they will rant that it's a new player, or if they see 10,000 items in the offer they will rant that it's a veteran taking advantage of the market. So I think the best is to keep us in the dark. You only see how big is the offer when you consume it.

I think real stock markets biggest protection right now is the "circuit breaker", it closes the stock market for an hour or so if it reaches like global -10% in a day (then it breaks again at -20%, -30%, etc). Except this, the market can be self regulated. I'm not sure if this could be useful in exex, for any reason.

Other thing I see is:

- If there is something particularly lacking, the price goes way up. If someone wants to hold items and only sell at this point, the risk is not ever reaching that point. In the other hand, if something is in excess and people want to sell them very cheap, what is the point of forbiding this? Maybe for that player it's worthy for some other reason. I think a simpler and more efficient solution is to display a staff-sugested or long term averaged price as reference in exex. By seeing the reference people will tend to stay around it, and after knowing the suggested price, if people still want to abuse (and remember, nobody is forced to do any business), they will do even without exex (placing items on a vendor with 50% of exex price or announcing in forum or chat that they are paying very nicely), so there's no way to avoid 100% of the abuses.

So, the bottom line is: I think exex is fine as it is. You can be disappointed with it? Yes, almost as much as in real world stock market.

The question that remains is how stubborn you are to try to swim against the river... if something is getting cheaper it's because there are more people selling than buying so buy it... if it gets more expensive sell it

This is a small economy? yes. Sometimes there are only a hand of players looking at some item? Yes. Still, exex works nicely, because all commodities there always float more or less around some dynamic average.

[jackpod]

- Placing limits relative to the current price may allow a group of players to artificially put up or down the price of specific commodity, and the limits will make it difficult for the price to return to 'normal' levels.

I agree. Placing limit up/down on the market price doesn't seem to be a good idea especially exex is not a market with large volume of trading activities over a given time. As walter said, especially since exex isn't quite liquid or active market (spread proves it), percentage lock will end up cluttering orders on specific price thus only slowing down price movements and leave the book with thinner depth. Rather, if there are theoretical price range set by staff, imposing maximum offer/lowest bid price makes more sense than limit up/down. (just my opinion~)

- If you can see the amount of the best offers, I guess some people might be upset. If they see 1 item they will rant that it's a new player, or if they see 10,000 items in the offer they will rant that it's a veteran taking advantage of the market. So I think the best is to keep us in the dark. You only see how big is the offer when you consume it.

I disagree on this take. Indeed there will always be different quantities on a book, and a very small order can distract participants. That's why current EXEX has minimum quantity requirements to list certain products. Also each price quote only shows total qty on same price (if 10 players put an offer of 1000 ingots for a dollar, then the quote should show offer of 10,000 ingots at $1), it will more likely help the price to reach equilibrium than barring people from trading (smaller orders will get lifted much quicker than larger ones.)

It is usually the case that supply/demand determines price, but often availability becomes an issue with price in commodity as materials are used to produce something. In fact, I believe there is an important value on "available quantity". Sometimes being able to buy 100,000 ingots can overweight buying each ingots for 1 less gold (people will pay premium on availability); thus, displaying current order quantity will give traders more clear picture ahead, will help the market to stabilize faster, and establish more solid expectation of a product to users.


Please don't get me wrong - I am very satisfied with the way current exex is (actually i'm happy that exex even exists~), and didn't start the post to complain about exexchange~!
nonetheless, while using exex, I thought it would be more beneficial to us to be able to see current bid/offer price with quantity rather than leaving it in dark.
(I am glad that this discussion made me think twice over what's a trade and what not~ guess we learn something new everyday~~~!!!! )