Grand Exchange Guide

Chapter 2 - Basic Grand Exchange Investing

Screenshots taken by: Kevin Lin
Some Screenshots updated by: Peterlor3

The Golden Rule of Investing

The entire philosophy of investing can be summed up by these four words:

"Buy Low, Sell High"

If you can grasp that concept, then congratulations, you are on your way.

Graphs: Making Your Life Easier

Probably your best friend in the game of investing in the Grand Exchange is the graphs. They ARE the most powerful tool in your investing arsenal. Not only that, but the Grand Exchange graphs make your job as an investor MUCH MUCH easier.




They can be accessed when you click Grand Exchange in the "Game Guide" tab on the Runescape main page.







Once you arrive there, you will see four main sections:

Price Rises



Price Rises display the items that raised the most in price over the last day, week, or month. You can access the weekly or monthly averages by clicking on the extended list. The weekly and monthly averages are best for medium to long term investing, while the dailies are best for short-term investments.

Price Drops



The 7 and 30 day averages for largest price drops are most useful when you are attempting to profit off a crashing item, or price bounce (discussed in the next chapter).

Most Traded



The Most Traded list is most useful for the type of investing we will do. The items displayed on this list are good to invest in because they are in fairly good demand, meaning you could easily buy and sell them. The items have a predictable cycle, and that could indicate when to buy and sell. "Hot items" on this list are the safest to invest in, and offer both large profit margins for investors who can afford millions of items at a time, or newer investors who can buy maybe thousands of the said item.

Most Valuable Traded Items

This is where all the big shots of the game go to. A lot of money can be made, or lost in this area. Once you become a pro investor, you will find yourself coming here often to check the prices of the priciest items of Runescape.

Finding "HOT ITEMS"

To become a good investor, you need to find hot items, or items that will raise in price over the next few days. Hot items can be found in the following two ways:

• Using Graphs


• Speculation of future Runescape updates (discussed in Advanced Techniques)

Using Graphs to Find Hot Items

As discussed earlier, graphs are the most powerful tool in your invest arsenal. Now to find out why. Say there's an item, like the Saradomin Godsword. They usually have predictable patterns because the graph shows it's prices go up and down like a wave. All you have to do is buy the item when the item is as the bottom of the wave, and when the curve goes near the top of the wave again (price rises), then you sell it. SIMPLE!



The trick is to know WHEN the wave has reached the bottom or top of its price fluctuations (ups-and-downs). Well, when the line starts flattening out a little (either at the top if price is going up, or near the bottom if the price is going down) instead of going up or down is a constant sloped line, then that indicates the prices are halting in the direction they were headed, and that the item will most likely take a change of direction in price sometime soon. That's your signal.


Remember: Flattening of curve should send a signal. Flattening near the top of the curve is a signal to sell, flattening near the bottom of the curve is a signal prices will start going up and that it's time to buy.

Items best for the Hot Items category are generally items used by the higher level players who have money to spend, and these hot items include weapons, armor, good food, potions. Basically battle related items. Items used to quickly train skills, like soft clay for crafting and making tablets, are good hot items.

Daily and Weekly Prices Intersection

Another way to tell if the price is going to go up. Is by the crossing of the daily average and the 5 day average.



For example, if the granite maul is currently decreasing in price, and the blue and orange line crosses, that means that the price will go up in 1-2 days day. If the Granite maul’s price is increasing, and the blue and orange line crosses, the price will decrease in 1-2 days. Refer to the picture for more information.


More on Choosing a Hot Item

Profits, profits, profits...

Say that you buy mind runes and you are hoping then will go up by 1gp (10% increase). So you spend 1M on 10K mind runes, price goes up, and TADA you get a healthy 100K profit the next day. Now if you invested your 1M in Rune plate bodies, and they went up about 1000 GP, you make less money. Even though they increased by 1000GP each, you only had 5 of them. And last time I checked, 10,000 times 1 is greater than 5 times 1000. Basic math, but its something players often forget.

The moral of the story here: Invest in lower priced items that you can get a lot of.

Item Demand

To make your trades quick and easy, make sure the items are traded somewhat often and are in high demand. The last thing you want to do is invest all your money into an item that is raising in price, but no one is buying. It backs up all your money, and keeps you from making the hundreds of thousands you could have made that day.

Limits and Getting Past Them

The last of the basics include limits. Jagex imposed limits on the Grand Exchange to prevent prices from being jacked up, and preventing players with billions of GP from being the only buyer and seller of a certain item on the market.

Here's the lowdown on the limits for buying and selling:

• Runes, Arrows, Most Good Food: 10,000 per four hours


• Armor and Weapons: 100 per hour/li>


• Treasure Trail Items (not all): 2 per hour


• Buying and item, and reselling the same item: 4 hours in between transaction

Often times, the last one causes players to think that no one is buying an item rather than realizing that they can't sell even if they tried for another 4 hours. So keep that one in mind if you didn't already know it.

Bypassing Limits

Its sad when you can only buy 100 of Rune 2 Handers if you know they will go up by at least 5K in the next day. To bypass this, you can try the following:

1. Buy from other players using trade window, you can buy as much as you want


2. Post on the Runescape forums in the Marketplace section


3. Use the Item Chains method (talked about in Advanced Methods)

These methods can help you overcome the limits without breaking the rules.

Now you know all there is to know on the basics of the Grand Exchange. It's time to move on to some Intermediate Investing Techniques!