Is it possible to make cash of selling commodities?

[infoman96 27]

I know we can mine for our own commodities on this game, but I've recently decided in a city that I've deemed high-tech that I won't mine for any materials nor will I use my own energy (except for one wind turbine), water (I have one water tower), and no sewage plants at all therefore much of the city services are outsourced.

Well as of two minutes ago I decided to take this game to the next level on realism. As I said above I don't mine for any of my own things nor do I need to, to support any buildings in my city but I decided to place a trade port still solely to purchase materials such as Alloy, Metal, and Etc. just to keep, and I'll sell them when the price goes up. So think of how gold works in real life, we purchase gold low and when the price goes up we sell it high. Therefore something like Alloy that fluctuates dramatically could return a serious profit to me if sold at the right time. I purchased my alloy for $34k but I've seen it go for $75k so that's a nice profit especially for those of us who don't specialize in mining.

As time goes on in this little city of only 15k people I intend on building a recycling facility that will constantly sell whatever it produces so it will have it's one trade port, while I have another trade port solely to hold materials to sell later on when the price is high.

Have any of you ever done what I'm saying? It seems genius to me especially for us poorer mayors; the city I'm working on now has $220k dollars after the purchase of alloy while its making a 9,000 surplus hourly therefore I'm running at sufficient levels, but once I sell the alloy and metal for a much higher price I'll be in great shape.

[DanielleSmithy 0]

I know we can mine for our own commodities on this game, but I've recently decided in a city that I've deemed high-tech that I won't mine for any materials nor will I use my own energy (except for one wind turbine), water (I have one water tower), and no sewage plants at all therefore much of the city services are outsourced.

Well as of two minutes ago I decided to take this game to the next level on realism. As I said above I don't mine for any of my own things nor do I need to, to support any buildings in my city but I decided to place a trade port still solely to purchase materials such as Alloy, Metal, and Etc. just to keep, and I'll sell them when the price goes up. So think of how gold works in real life, we purchase gold low and when the price goes up we sell it high. Therefore something like Alloy that fluctuates dramatically could return a serious profit to me if sold at the right time. I purchased my alloy for $34k but I've seen it go for $75k so that's a nice profit especially for those of us who don't specialize in mining.

As time goes on in this little city of only 15k people I intend on building a recycling facility that will constantly sell whatever it produces so it will have it's one trade port, while I have another trade port solely to hold materials to sell later on when the price is high.

Have any of you ever done what I'm saying? It seems genius to me especially for us poorer mayors; the city I'm working on now has $220k dollars after the purchase of alloy while its making a 9,000 surplus hourly therefore I'm running at sufficient levels, but once I sell the alloy and metal for a much higher price I'll be in great shape.

What's your point?

[infoman96 27]

I know we can mine for our own commodities on this game, but I've recently decided in a city that I've deemed high-tech that I won't mine for any materials nor will I use my own energy (except for one wind turbine), water (I have one water tower), and no sewage plants at all therefore much of the city services are outsourced.

Well as of two minutes ago I decided to take this game to the next level on realism. As I said above I don't mine for any of my own things nor do I need to, to support any buildings in my city but I decided to place a trade port still solely to purchase materials such as Alloy, Metal, and Etc. just to keep, and I'll sell them when the price goes up. So think of how gold works in real life, we purchase gold low and when the price goes up we sell it high. Therefore something like Alloy that fluctuates dramatically could return a serious profit to me if sold at the right time. I purchased my alloy for $34k but I've seen it go for $75k so that's a nice profit especially for those of us who don't specialize in mining.

As time goes on in this little city of only 15k people I intend on building a recycling facility that will constantly sell whatever it produces so it will have it's one trade port, while I have another trade port solely to hold materials to sell later on when the price is high.

Have any of you ever done what I'm saying? It seems genius to me especially for us poorer mayors; the city I'm working on now has $220k dollars after the purchase of alloy while its making a 9,000 surplus hourly therefore I'm running at sufficient levels, but once I sell the alloy and metal for a much higher price I'll be in great shape.

What's your point?

The point is we can make this game more real by purchasing materials while low, and selling them high. I'm not sure about how the global market works exactly, but I'm hoping the more people absorb these materials, the more the price will go up therefore me purchasing low right now (34k for alloy at the moment), the price could go up to 70k and give me a nice return on investment. I'm using alloy sort of like how other countries use bonds, you buy them and when you really need cash you sell them. So while my treasury reflects only $63k right now, the reality of my networth is far higher since I own 80 tons of alloy now, with the capacity of holding 120 tons of alloy. When the price goes back up to 60k, I'm selling all of my alloy.

[Snugies 91]

sounds like a lot of buying and selling for not much profit

[infoman96 27]

sounds like a lot of buying and selling for not much profit

All depends on market volatility, currently I have four trade deports and one trade port. Some resources that I'm saving up on arent going to make me cash, while others will. Alloy for example is still at 35,581 which is only 1,500 more than what I purchased mine for, but the market may swing it up to 50k or 60k which will be great profit from all the ally I have.

Essentially what I'm stating is for people who are like me that are cash hoarders, the option of investing in materials is a great alternative. Realistically speaking, if I didn't purchase all of the materials I have now, I would have about 1,000,000 in my treasury but now I have exactly 224,419.

I guess because I'm a real life investor, this is a bit easier to me. I check my portfolio a few times a day, so checking when to buy and when not to buy is a bit easier for me in comparison to someone who doesn't invest much.

I just purchased 2,000 units of processors for 180k all together, so this could lose a profit. But if it swings up to more than that, I'll be doing great. I def plan on purchasing a lot more processors if the price drops to about 30k.

[Snugies 91]

yes I guess SimCity may not be susceptible to the real life commodities 'everything drops in price all at once'.

[infoman96 27]

Alloy is currently trading at 48k, lets just say I'm making a great return on investment.

[Xenocity 343]

Alloy is currently trading at 48k, lets just say I'm making a great return on investment.

Same here.

 

I had my plastics and  alloy lots fill up faster than they were being sold in one city.

 

That city was making ~200k a day selling them allowing me to run between 5k-10k budget deficits.

This allowed my University city to flourish and meet the high demands of the sims without raising taxes.

It lasted a good few simulated years until an earthquake took the recycling centers out forcing my city to go bankrupt.

 

I did manage to restore the city to a large degree, but it was expensive and time consuming.

[12thDoctor 14]

Not sure if you've seen this yet or not, but there is a Maxis dev blog explaining how the market prices are calculated.

 

In a nutshell, prices are calculated based on how much was sold/bought each hour or so... which also suggests prices will be most stable on lesser played servers and during times that are "off-peak" for the server (i.e., probably 3am-7am in North America). Might be useful in your strategizing. 

 

Considering how price is calculated, you should be able to influence prices in a similar way. Since prices aren't adjusted in real-time, you could buy a good deal, wait a bit for the server to recalculate the price (which will factor in the demand of your purchases), and sell for profit once the market price changes. Not sure if this is plausible, in practice, but seems like it should work in theory.

 

Also, the global price history has been re-enabled (or added) to the game... but you can only access it via the main menu screen (it's under the "Sim World" option). Not sure if you were aware of this, since it's a bit out of the way to discover.

[Noobi-Wan 22]

It is an interesting idea but in practice I think this might become quite cumbersome.

As everything is done based upon an in game hourly profit and loss any sort of predictability would be pulled out of the process which means you would probably want a very well balanced RCI city to afford you the luxury of doing this.

If there was another specialisation like finance where you could build a stock exchange and manage this sort of trading from the HQ I think it would be easier to do. Whether this would be possible is another thing....

[infoman96 27]

It is an interesting idea but in practice I think this might become quite cumbersome.

As everything is done based upon an in game hourly profit and loss any sort of predictability would be pulled out of the process which means you would probably want a very well balanced RCI city to afford you the luxury of doing this.

If there was another specialisation like finance where you could build a stock exchange and manage this sort of trading from the HQ I think it would be easier to do. Whether this would be possible is another thing....

I do agree that it's a difficult process, often times when trying to sell my materials off the price fluctuates too hard for me to maximize profit. I wish they'd just build a "Commodities Market" that allows us to purchase materials without holding them physically within our cities.

[MayorQuimbie 13]

I cant see the the point.... I can get a city ticking over bringing in 1-2m a day in a specialised city with not much problem at all... Ive not yet managed to get to a stage were resources run out.... Ive LONG finfished my city before getting to that point..

 

Id imagaine to make similar money trading you would need at least two trade ports in a costal city... would that take up to much room?

 

To be fair its something I might try...a high tech, high educated, med-high wealth trading city........... I imagine it might be quite difficult, to start at least, without having a cash gift. 

[Eriseley 4]

I was going to make a city like this but got sidetracked into a tourist town for regional reasons. Anyway it seems like an interesting specialization because all you need are the ports, which are fairly low profile compared to everything you need to make the other specializations work. I would probably use it as supplemental income for an otherwise normal city, because it'd get annoying watching the markets all the time.

[infoman96 27]

http://gawker.com/goldman-sachs-took-5-billion-from-consumers-by-moving-861862148

Maybe a bit off topic, but nonethless Goldman Sachs seemed to use my strategy a bit. If I had the cash on hand, I would love to take a great amount of the available commodities in the game and hoard them until I drive the price up.

[MayorQuimbie 13]

 

sounds like a lot of buying and selling for not much profit

All depends on market volatility, currently I have four trade deports and one trade port. Some resources that I'm saving up on arent going to make me cash, while others will. Alloy for example is still at 35,581 which is only 1,500 more than what I purchased mine for, but the market may swing it up to 50k or 60k which will be great profit from all the ally I have.

Essentially what I'm stating is for people who are like me that are cash hoarders, the option of investing in materials is a great alternative. Realistically speaking, if I didn't purchase all of the materials I have now, I would have about 1,000,000 in my treasury but now I have exactly 224,419.

I guess because I'm a real life investor, this is a bit easier to me. I check my portfolio a few times a day, so checking when to buy and when not to buy is a bit easier for me in comparison to someone who doesn't invest much.

I just purchased 2,000 units of processors for 180k all together, so this could lose a profit. But if it swings up to more than that, I'll be doing great. I def plan on purchasing a lot more processors if the price drops to about 30k.

 

Its just a game you know, I think your thinking a little to deeply about it. You do know with just two smelting factories you could probably hit £500k - £1m profit per in game day/month...  Buy low sell high isnt a hard concept to grasp.

[MayorQuimbie 13]

Alloy is currently trading at 48k, lets just say I'm making a great return on investment.

So two weeks later you have sold your ally purchased for 36K / ton @ 48K /ton...  so you had 775k worth of alloy that you have now sold for $1,033,075.....   hope you havent been actually say at your computer waiting for that great investment to pay off.... your ports alone must have been costing you $2-3000 /  hour

 

 

The point is its a game, and although a nice concept in a very basic form, there are considerably easier more efficient ways to make money

[Msprintz 25]

Alloy is currently trading at 48k, lets just say I'm making a great return on investment.

So two weeks later you have sold your ally purchased for 36K / ton @ 48K /ton...  so you had 775k worth of alloy that you have now sold for $1,033,075.....   hope you havent been actually say at your computer waiting for that great investment to pay off.... your ports alone must have been costing you $2-3000 /  hour

 

 

The point is its a game, and although a nice concept in a very basic form, there are considerably easier more efficient ways to make money. Amen to that. It gets easier once you unlock more advanced industrial buildings in the region. It's also far easier to reap rewards by importing the raw materials and selling the finished products and the products manufactured from finished products.

[infoman96 27]

Alloy is currently trading at 48k, lets just say I'm making a great return on investment.

So two weeks later you have sold your ally purchased for 36K / ton @ 48K /ton... so you had 775k worth of alloy that you have now sold for $1,033,075..... hope you havent been actually say at your computer waiting for that great investment to pay off.... your ports alone must have been costing you $2-3000 / hour

The point is its a game, and although a nice concept in a very basic form, there are considerably easier more efficient ways to make money

I've been in NC for the past week, plus my PC has issues with its wi-fi therefore the last time I actually played was when I posted about the price-increase on alloy. Aside from that though, the ports can be turned off while the goods are stored virtually for free until the date comes when a commodities value increases drastically. If I had the power, I would do my best to offset the market by absorbing a great deal of the commodities but the reality is I can't do that.

The city that I do this strategy in actually has a regular trade depot to export the city's goods including but not limited to oil, chips, and another commodity that slips my mind therefore I'm constantly making cash but I'm also hoarding as well for a later day.

Understand?