To start off, I would like to explain "Price Manipulation". Questions and Answers: Q:What is price manipulation? A:Price manipulation is the creation of false demand for an object. Example "Only 20 people can use item A, however, there are 300 of A available. Supply is greater than demand. A group of people decide to manipulate the price (AKA "merch") item A. The group of "merchanters" put in an offer in the grand exchange to buy 600 of item A. Demand now exceeds supply. This forces the price of item A to go up. The "merchanters" then "dump" (sell) the item at a set point (which is usually never reached). Upon doing so the price will begin to crash. For an example of a grand exchange chart, take a look at ranging amulets. Q:How does this affect me? A:No matter what you are doing, price manipulation CAN affect you. Items you may need can reach very high prices for absolutely no reason other than to make some quick GP for others. As an example, look at iron ore. Iron ore is currently 200gp, which is double the price iron ore has been for over 3 years. This is detrimental to smithers, who now notice that their skill has increased in price to level. Armour (especially barrows) is constantly put through this process. Q:Is it reportable? A:Not that I know of, however Jagex's official position has been to tell others NOT to partake in price manipulation, as they may lose large amounts of money. Q:What is being done to stop price manipulation? A:Jagex has yet to do anything about it. Q:Is there a difference between price manipulation and "investing"? A:Yes, there is. Investing is when one buys a large amount of an item, but instead of forcing the item to go up with False demand, the investor will just follow the natural "curve" of the items price graph. Merching or price manipulation is usually over a shorter period of time, while investing can be a process which takes months to profit greatly. Q:Are the price increases of ALL items caused by merchanting? A:Not at all. Inflation caused by an excess amount of gold in the economy (which is currently happening due to 76king) raises ALL prices in general. As people are able to afford more items, the price generally goes up for an item. If you take a look at the 180 day increase of most items, a somewhat "J" shape occurs, this is inflation. Summer is usually a time when price inflation occurs most rampantly, due to most of the RS population being out of school, and able to play more. The Rant AMG! MAH DR4G0N BONES R COSTS OVR 9000 NAU, I CNT PRAYER!" Just walk into the Grand Exchange in world 2. Other than the massive amount of buyers and sellers of items, you will always ALWAYS see something like "JOIN [CLAN CHAT] AND MAKE MILS", usually in a glow3:wave style or something similar. This spam of clan chat advertisements is usually annoying to look at, but can be easily turned off. A few months ago, I thought "Hey, maybe I can try this thing out right?". So I joined a clan chat. I read some tips in the RSOF about how to avoid "scam merch clans". After reading this post, I believed I was safe. So I waited for a new merch to start in this certain clan chat. A week of waiting finally brought a new merch item, dagon'hai robes. I thought "okay! time to buy some". So I managed to get my hands on about 5 sets for a price of 250k. Eventually the price went up to 750k, and I finally sold all of my sets, for a healthy profit. I instantly thought "WOW! Merching R0X!". I checked RSOF to see if any other merch clans were as successful. I went into the Items section of the forums, and noticed 4 or 5 threads about the dagon hai robes. I opened one up and saw a quester complaining about the price, seeing as you need a set to complete WGS. Other threads were similar, and I just simply thought 'Whatever, I made money, not my problem". That is the problem though. I, in my greed, brought the price of a needed item up, just so I could profit. Although I only had 5 sets, I still contributed to the rise. See, that's the problem, people are selfish, and this trait is only heightened with merch clans. Well, that's just general greed pretty much, and everyone wants to get as much GP in this game as possible, for status/better armour. So where am I going with this? That price manipulation affects the economy negatively. A lot of of arguments for price manipulation have been somewhat like this "Grand Exchange is like the stock market, so you can make the price go up just like the normal market!". This is untrue, in the real stock market, there are rules against what is called "insider trading", which is basically what merchanting is. Some people have said that to fix this problem, to institute a "set-price" system of sort, where a price will NOT fluctuate. This is more harmful than helpful, as there is no way of telling if an item is selling, buying, etc... I have no clue on how to stop price manipulation other than to do something about the leaders of clans. However, until Jagex pursues any form of action, merchanting will run rampant and idiots will continue (as they have always done) to control the runescape economy. If anyone has any ideas, I will gladly edit them in the post. *I will edit in pictures.