For Andy.

I noticed something strange on the LU markets.

Between Oct and November 4044 oil supply jumped from 3.4 billion barrels to 7.9 billion barrels and during that same month demand dropped from 8.2 billion to 4.2 billion.

The supply jump could be explained by a large dump from a player, or perhaps a closing of an account. But the huge drop in demand at the exact same time has me scratching my head.

Also this happened a few days ago but I didn't look into it as close.

I saved a copy of the charts but don't know how to paste them here.

http://tinypic.com/r/ae0206/9

http://tinypic.com/r/33jtzrr/9

all that means is that a large player put in a huge buy order taking up all the oil he could and then when he was ready to dump it, he canceled his buy order and dumped causing supply to go up and demand to go down, the reason for this is to wage trade war against competing oil corporations. When some other oil corps have closed and supply and demand have leveled off he may repeat the tactic until enough oil corps have closed to raise the price up to the level that he wants.

Johanas Bilderberg,

The way the system works can be confusing. "Demand" doesn't really represent demand, rather it means something more along the lines of "Unfilled Orders". Supply was likely boosted by a President/CEO with a large stockpile of Oil. Dumping it all on the market at once. The Demand drop, would have been from that supply, filling, those unfilled orders. That is why supply spikes, line up with demand drops in SimCountry.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

Both demand and supply are influenced by unfilled orders.

we are not counting fixed price offers or orders in the totals.
If we did, it will be easy to manipulate the market by placing orders at absurd prices and let them sit there, influencing the numbers.
So we only count everything that goes for market price.

we have notices several very large fluctuations in Oil, Software and Computers cause by a player.

If someone is dumping a billion units, then there could be a sudden surplus and the prices can start falling.

this can trigger large orders.

These three products have a structural shortage and sudden large supply results in large fluctuations.

For large products (high turnover), it is hard for a player to destabilize the market for even several months.

Andy,

"we are not counting fixed price offers or orders in the totals."
Thank you for this information. This increases my confidence, that market prices are determined by honest buy/sell orders. It's always interesting to learn more about how the simulation works.

"These three products have a structural shortage"
Is this because people are not producing enough of these products? Or is the shortage "structural", because base consumption/production is unbalanced?

Signed President of DanNation on LU

That is good information to know. So really if supply goes up by 1, demand also drops by 1. So the difference between supply and demand should really be divided by 2 if you want to figure out how to meet the shortage completely.

Sam and I have made a massive dent in LU's oil shortage. I think combined we have about 35% of the production now. I'm also using my second CEO to try to fix the construction shortage.

Haha just checked. Make that 49% control . No one buys a barrel of oil without us knowing about it haha.

John I want in on your oil opec cartel. Lmao

Oils overrated!!!

I control the most important markets of all... the markets with the most power... the markets that truly rules the world... FEAR ME AND MY CARTEL OF TEA AND COFFEE!

Tremble you foolish mortals as I rule the world. What will you do without your morning, afternoon, or evening cup of TEA or COFFEE!!!
(runs off laughing manically)

Thank you Andy. That answered my question.

The market is stabilizing as we speak.

John Galt,

Are you sure it's wise to focus so heavily on just two markets? What if there is a downturn in the Oil or Construction Markets? With so much of your wealth tied up in them, it could get pretty devastating.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

Supersoldier You can’t take my coffee o how will I wake up in the morning and how will my workers be productive.

Daniel.

We have a strategy in place to deal with such issues.

I've never seen Oil have a downturn in the past 9 months. Also when I used to play in the old days it also never had a downturn that I can recall. The advantage of oil is that it is used by electricity corps, which is then used by every other corporation in the game. Watch me eat my words in a few months lol but I'm sticking to my guns.

John Galt,

Well with 49% of LUs Oil Production under your control, that makes you bigger than OPEC. Talk about wealth and power.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

With great power comes great responsibility. Many sim peoples depend on the uninterrupted supply of oil.

Use your power wisely, John Galt.

Missed some comments here.

Structural shortage products are products that for a very long time have shortages.

There is no reason for this.

If everyone will start producing them, the problem will be resolved.

Efficiency and productivity products, services, HT services, oil and more are always short.
I have no idea why. they produce great profits.

The real question is:
do we have enough workers around to produce everything we need.
If not, then this is a structural problem.

Do those absurd market strategies really work?
like 200% up

I build no friggin agri, food, or gov ever.
HT and Ind and some chem oil line.
No Pickup truck rednecks in my country.

don't know what you mean.

If a product is short, the price is higher.
if your corporation is upgraded (quality), your product will sell for more.

It can end up very profitable.

Andy,

"The real question is:
do we have enough workers around to produce everything we need.
If not, then this is a structural problem."

I'm pretty sure the answer to this is clear. Considering the massive scale of many of the shortages, the limited number of available workers, and the fact that each Corp itself consumes input resources, and is responsible for increased product usage by workers due to wages. I'd say it's currently impossible for players to balance the markets simply by building new Corps.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

Maybe you are right.

there are however many countries that do not use the entire work force.

I think that 10.000 corporations could be added with the current population. What would that mean in the market?

we have all kinds of measurements and we tune a bit from time to time.
we did recently to improve profitability.

will do another tiny round soon.

Andy,

While it's true that Simcounty has some Nations with high levels of unemployment.

This is also true in the real world.
Counties such as, Spain 16.55% unemployed, Greece 20.60% unemployed, South Africa 26.70% unemployed, Brazil 12.60% unemployed. As well as many others.

Even though the Real World has many nations that do not produce at maximum capacity, we are still able to produce the products necessary to supply world markets.

It's unreasonable to expect that all nations will be able to produce at full capacity all the time, both in Simcountry and the Real World. There needs to be some surplus production capacity to pick up the slack, when nations get into difficulty.

If the real world markets required everyone to produce at peak production just to remain supplied, there would be constant worldwide shortages. Just like we are suffering in Simcountry today.

We need to have some surplu

This was not answered for a long time. I am sorry about it.

As I said before, we are never sure that there are enough workers to produce everything we need.

If you add people, you increase production but you also increase consumption.

There are many countries with high unemployment and if this changes, the market could have oversupply or maybe not.
we really do not know.

We can tweak productivity.
for example, we can have oil companies produce the same with a smaller number of workers. This can be done with every single product.

Doing so is risky.

If we flip the balance over, there will be more surpluses and prices of many products will come down.
The entire balance of income and cost could be changed and countries will make losses.
Corporations will make losses or much lower profits, their market value will decline and the entire asset value of countries will colaps.

I can alr