Puncaek Posted September 13, 2020 Share Posted September 13, 2020 Hello! Been a while since i've dipped my toes in trading, maybe 2016-ish. Is it still as prominent as always, or are there signs I should watch out for? I'm mainly curious about what's changed and any tips for starting with 20 keys, apart from the obvious "buy good quicksells, quicksell for a bit more". Plus, with the bigger wave of trade bots, I'm wondering whether it'd be, as the title says, still worth it to try trade unusuals in todays economy? Any help is much appreciated! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vrakos Anthrakir Posted September 13, 2020 Share Posted September 13, 2020 bots aren't nearly as much of a thing with unusual trading as they are with low-tier trading Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abstract Posted September 13, 2020 Share Posted September 13, 2020 31 minutes ago, Puncaek said: Hello! Been a while since i've dipped my toes in trading, maybe 2016-ish. Is it still as prominent as always, or are there signs I should watch out for? I'm mainly curious about what's changed and any tips for starting with 20 keys, apart from the obvious "buy good quicksells, quicksell for a bit more". Plus, with the bigger wave of trade bots, I'm wondering whether it'd be, as the title says, still worth it to try trade unusuals in todays economy? Any help is much appreciated! It's definitely worth it if you're able to wait more than a week to sell your items. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Julia Posted September 13, 2020 Share Posted September 13, 2020 If you know what you're doing yes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krapek Posted September 13, 2020 Share Posted September 13, 2020 yea Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BLIND o-o Posted September 13, 2020 Share Posted September 13, 2020 if u own bots yes so u can keep outcuttin eachother to the end Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stylish Posted September 13, 2020 Share Posted September 13, 2020 6 hours ago, Vrakos Anthrakir said: bots aren't nearly as much of a thing with unusual trading as they are with low-tier trading Disagree completely. I manually manage around 200 buy orders for unusuals at a time and get overcut by a scrap to a ref every 30 minutes to hour or so. I have to update them dozens of times a day. They also use these buy orders to obtain things which they then quicksell cheaper than anyone else can afford to, still turning profit in a fraction of the time it'd take a human to do and completely throwing margins for non-bot traders into a disarray. Oftentimes something I'm selling will be undercut by a bot and I won't make the one sale I would on it, and it sits that much longer. Also, even if I have the highest buy order, people will still sell to a bot instead of waiting for a few minutes for me to confirm the order, check the history of the hat, and correct offer price. Bots have made people incredibly impatient when it comes to trading and expect an instant response. I've had 4 unusual offers come in today that were sold within 1-5 minutes instead to a bot for at least a key less that I personally verified. On top of all that, some bot owners donate to increase their amount of listings possible. I have seen some bots have upwards of 11,000 buy orders spread across hats, though most tend to have a few hundred to a few thousand. The amount of time I put into managing 100-200 buy orders already would be considered nuts by most, I can't imagine manually updating that many buy orders. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
creepio Posted September 14, 2020 Share Posted September 14, 2020 1 hour ago, Stylish said: Disagree completely. I manually manage around 200 buy orders for unusuals at a time and get overcut by a scrap to a ref every 30 minutes to hour or so. I have to update them dozens of times a day. They also use these buy orders to obtain things which they then quicksell cheaper than anyone else can afford to, still turning profit in a fraction of the time it'd take a human to do and completely throwing margins for non-bot traders into a disarray. Oftentimes something I'm selling will be undercut by a bot and I won't make the one sale I would on it, and it sits that much longer. Also, even if I have the highest buy order, people will still sell to a bot instead of waiting for a few minutes for me to confirm the order, check the history of the hat, and correct offer price. Bots have made people incredibly impatient when it comes to trading and expect an instant response. I've had 4 unusual offers come in today that were sold within 1-5 minutes instead to a bot for at least a key less that I personally verified. On top of all that, some bot owners donate to increase their amount of listings possible. I have seen some bots have upwards of 11,000 buy orders spread across hats, though most tend to have a few hundred to a few thousand. The amount of time I put into managing 100-200 buy orders already would be considered nuts by most, I can't imagine manually updating that many buy orders. "Bots aren't hurting the economy" - Bot owners Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nikspy Posted September 14, 2020 Share Posted September 14, 2020 6 hours ago, Stylish said: Disagree completely. I manually manage around 200 buy orders for unusuals at a time and get overcut by a scrap to a ref every 30 minutes to hour or so. I have to update them dozens of times a day. They also use these buy orders to obtain things which they then quicksell cheaper than anyone else can afford to, still turning profit in a fraction of the time it'd take a human to do and completely throwing margins for non-bot traders into a disarray. Oftentimes something I'm selling will be undercut by a bot and I won't make the one sale I would on it, and it sits that much longer. Also, even if I have the highest buy order, people will still sell to a bot instead of waiting for a few minutes for me to confirm the order, check the history of the hat, and correct offer price. Bots have made people incredibly impatient when it comes to trading and expect an instant response. I've had 4 unusual offers come in today that were sold within 1-5 minutes instead to a bot for at least a key less that I personally verified. On top of all that, some bot owners donate to increase their amount of listings possible. I have seen some bots have upwards of 11,000 buy orders spread across hats, though most tend to have a few hundred to a few thousand. The amount of time I put into managing 100-200 buy orders already would be considered nuts by most, I can't imagine manually updating that many buy orders. I'm pretty sure that the virtual economist made a video on this very topic. He talked about how the need for bots signifies that the tf2 economy is too large and diverse for people to be able to handle. This is a good sign. But something that he felt was unfair was the undercutting script that the bots had. This script pretty much killed the chances of anyone who wanted to thrive in low tier trading. I personally think that something should be done about this, because I feel like people should not have to constantly have to relist buy or sell orders, when a bot owner can just pay a certain amount of money for the bot and just get it done instantly. There is no real easy way to solve this problem. The virtual economist suggested that we just remove that script from the equation completely, forcing bot owners (at least the ones with thousands of buy orders) to back down a little bit from constantly being at the top of the buy or sell orders. This could potentially allow some smaller and more low tier traders to take the places of those bots. But this might have adverse effects that I'm just not thinking of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flamadin Posted September 14, 2020 Share Posted September 14, 2020 I know that bots and humans bidding up buy orders is helpful to the economy. Also, in much the same way, buy order wars in Steam Community Market are helpful. This makes the overall market more liquid, and trusted. As the the higher % of retail value that you can quicksell something increases, it makes investing in high value items and backpacks safer, and more useful choice for hobby/collector type investing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stylish Posted September 14, 2020 Share Posted September 14, 2020 12 hours ago, Flamadin said: I know that bots and humans bidding up buy orders is helpful to the economy. Also, in much the same way, buy order wars in Steam Community Market are helpful. This makes the overall market more liquid, and trusted. As the the higher % of retail value that you can quicksell something increases, it makes investing in high value items and backpacks safer, and more useful choice for hobby/collector type investing. I was a buy order war bidder on the SCM back in 2013-2015. I made quite a bit off it back then, primarily through australiums, collector's, and similarly tiered/priced items. Today, it is absolutely impossible to maintain a buy order on SCM, and I have completely abandoned it as a source of any form of trading income. I am outbid on every buy order within 30 seconds by a single penny. I outbid by much larger margins, but cannot maintain an even remotely close to the top buy order. Bots are even more of an issue on the SCM than here. I know bots aren't allowed on the SCM but they are still very active and prevalent. I've been able to also track buyers of items and confirm they are bots and not humans behind the buy. I should not have to seriously consider running bots through alts, on any platforms, to maintain any sort of relevance in trading. This is coming from a literal no-lifer in terms of trading. I spend obscene amounts of time tracking market trends, sales, and maintaining listings. More time spent than most people do at an actual job, due to losing mine due to current world events. There is simply no reason to not be running a bot at this point based on the sheer profitability of it vs manual, traditional trading. Still, I hold out because it doesn't sit well with me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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