Low Risk Merchanting?

[Zephy]

Hi, can someone give me details on relatively low risk merchanting strategies? I've heard the usual buy below mid and sell above, but I don't really know how to find items that are doable on both fronts consistently. Thanks.

[edwardelric87]

stuff thats produced in vast quantities and has a stable price i.e. ores, bars, logs, etc

[Zephy]

stuff thats produced in vast quantities and has a stable price i.e. ores, bars, logs, etc

I've tried common resources and it's fallen apart on me a lot. Either they're temporarily rising and I can't buy but a few, or they're temporarily falling and I can't sell at a profit. I've never seen a true flatline. Maybe I'm picking the wrong items. Just to clarify, you mean within the frame of a single GE update, not holding on to it for many days, right? What percentage can you usually do above and below med and still hit the volume limit?

[Ulysses]

In My Opinion, merchanting has its associative risks whichever way you do it. Low risk may correspond to low investment total, but that's just pointless. Or may mean as said, investing in (generally) stable commodities, but their prices change randomly, possibly due to other merchanting activities by other parties. Training useful skills that can be profitable later on, is better on a long term. And you could, let's say, buy a dragon pickaxe and level mining, then sell it back later - its prices wouldn't change that much - besides even if it drop by say 5-10%, surely the ores you've mined would be more than enough to pay for the loss. Or godswords, claws, dfs - for combat purposes, or slayer, etc. In this way, your merchanting goods actually serve a purpose more than a purely aesthetic commodity, as a tool for training, etc. Then later, on you can sell it back for a reasonable price...

[Knight_Zaros]

Check the guides around here and other forums. There are probably more 'merchanting guides' than there are of any one other type of guides. But all of them say basically the same thing. The common ideas are obviously buy cheap sell for more. Buying in high quanities in low risk items can provide profits but can take alot of time to buy and sell at a higher price, and can not produce the profits you see fit. The best investing is done once you already have a considerable amount to invest. You can invest in rares when they seem at a realtively low rate, and hold onto them till they raise. They may go up and down but over the course of 180 days definitly a year you will see some pretty intense profits, and it will never really change (unless they where to make them untradable, or something obviously).

 

As said before if you don't have much money to invest in I would work and concentrate more on skills. Skills that can make you some money (even if only a little). Skilling and combat training is really the way everyone makes thier first considerable sum of money. Once you have a few million to tens of millions you would be better off investing. If you already have a 10-20mil+ I still sugguest you invest in your skills and character first, maybe set 2-5million aside and work on investing.

 

The art of merchanting has really change since the introductions of the GE and trade restrictions years back and I witnessed the changes first hand and merchanting is not something you learn and definitly not perfect overnight. In reality you never perfect it because you always take risks you just learn to come out on top more times than not!