Merchanting style: Update/Event flipping.

[kirito]

Since i wanted to spend less time merchanting and more time focusing on other aspects of the game i've chosen this style of merchanting to be my main focus. I love that i can still get decent amount of extra cash with minimum effort.

Update flipping:

Update flipping is when you buy an item that you predict will rise in price, due to an upcoming update. The key to update flipping is information. Jagex will release information or hints to the upcoming updates which you can use to predict the market. Do not wait for the updates to get into the market. The information is what moves the market, not the update. This can be used to your advantage. The first thoughts that cross your mind are rarely a bad one, since the information is what moves the market others will have the same thought. This makes investing with a safety net you can get into an item and let that first thought carry the price up. You can make profit off of items without even carrying them into the update to have little to no risk.
(For example) prior to the release of construction skill they released mahogany and teak logs in preparation to the skill. One could have stocked up on logs prior to the new skill and the increased demand would raise the price. Even now as i right this we are days away from the release of the invention skill. Months ago they let out the information the the divination energy would be used. Upon the release of this information several months ago you went from being able to buy some energy for 7gp to upwards of 100+gp. This change happened in a matter of days, Months prior to the event.

Event flipping

Event flipping similar to update flipping but you can also predict the falling and rebounding of items. You must really use the theory of supply and demand when event flipping. If the event is handing out a lot of a particular item the price will fall since there will be an abnormal surplus. Jagex is quiet known for giving out silverhawk feathers often. This also applies to events that require you to use a particular item the price will rise due to the increase in demand. These fluctuations will even out after the event. So you could in theory buy items that will fall after the event and let them rise back and resell. Or buy items that will rise at the beginning of the event and sell them closer towards the end. Another thing Jagex will do is release event items most commonly for cosmetic uses. These items will fall in price until closer to the end of the event when it isn't being collected for gp as much. People often wait till the prices fall before filling there needs so timing this bottom out price accurately can produce high returns. The most successful time to flip items during an event is the 2x exp events. There are two of these events a year and is possible to make safe high return flips during 2x exp events. Below are Events to look out for:

2x exp: These happen around March/April and September/October, These are random so you just keep an eye out and plan early. I buy items sometimes months in advanced and you will see prices of things used to level up skills (excluding prayer). You can sometimes see up to a 50% return with a little luck, but if planed for with enough time in advance a 30% return of investment should be easily obtainable. This need for skills creates less demand for combat gear so many gears are sold to increase the amount of skilling can be done. This also lowers the price of gears so its advised to follow the crowd and sell your trade-able gear. You can re-buy low as an investment or just to replace what you sold, thus increasing gains slightly.
(visual example pending)

Bossing/slayer weekends During these weekends particularly bossing equipment for bossing and slayer grinding will increase. So buying some related weapons and most commonly the food used and reselling during the event. The increase of bossing and slayer activity this will also cause a temporary overflow of drops making them lower in price during and shortly after the event. This of coarse can be used to also flip the drops from these events. These drop flips obviously can be a little more tricky and less predictable.
(example of Decembers' boss/slayer event effects)


skilling weekends These events will sometimes increase the demand for some skilling supplies. The same theory of the 2x exp events apply here. These weekend events gain less attention in comparison to the 2x exp event so they are less predictable but can be profitable.
(example of Decembers' skilling event effects)


Event item fliping Often jagex will do events with temperary items used for mostly cosmetic purposes. When these items are first released they are priced quite high. People often sell these items for the first while and it causes them to crash, hard. Commonly they drop from like 10,000gp to sometimes under 1,000gp. People often wait for them to drop extremely low before buying what they need to get the cosmetics they want. When this happens it will rise the prices back up and predicting this fluctuation can be very profitable. My most successful event item flip was Halloween of 2015. Jagex released a candy corn that crashed from 10,000gp and i snagged 60k of them at 750 gp. Once the price started to rise people jumped on them in fear of missing the low price. 8 hours later when i woke i resold all of them for 2900 each. Turning a 45m stack into a quick 174m profiting almost 130m overnight. Granted luck was a great factor in this particular occasion but i have yet to not make a decent profit for little to no effort in this style of flips. and are quite predictable.
(visual example pending)


As always please take my guides and alter them to best fit your game style and leave me some feed back so we can bake better guides and always enjoy, have fun, and good luck