Market Cycles and PLEX purchases

As traders we notice many different market cycles. Being aware of cycles and adapting market strategy to take advantage of different cycles can increase profits greatly. Some of the different cycles commonly seen in online games include daily, weekly, monthly, holiday, seasonal, patch and expansion cycles.

One thing that always puzzled me in Eve because I couldn't figure out what was behind it was an odd monthly cycle.  I noticed that I always seem to make more profits (both larger margins and higher overall profits) during the first and last weeks of each month. It always seems like the competition gets fiercer, margins tighter and sales harder to come by during the middle 2 weeks of every month.

In fact I often felt like I was just spinning my wheels during the middle two weeks and not making very much no matter how much time I spent working the market.

Conversely it often seems like I make half my profits in the first week of the month.

Last month to test that and make sure I wasn't just imagining things I hardly did anything during the middle 2 weeks of the month. I still made over 34 billion. Roughly 20 billion in the first week, 10 billion in the last week and only about 4 billion the 2 weeks in between.

For the longest time I couldn't figure out what could possibly be behind this strange market behavior. Then suddenly it hit me.

Real Life pay cycles and PLEX purchases must be behind it. A lot of working people get paid around the end of the month. Players are more likely to pay for their gaming habits when they have the most money and for most people that's around the end of the month. They buy PLEX from CCP with real money, sell the PLEX for ISK and use the ISK to purchase in game items. That drives market sales volume up for a while. The lowest priced sell orders and highest priced buy orders get filled quickly which in turn increases profit margins.

Furthermore, higher prices encourage faction grinders, mission / incursion runners, manufacturers, etc., to cash out therefore increasing sales competition and bringing prices back down again.

Finally it makes sense!