81–90 of 145 posts
I've seen lots of books on Amazon priced at $0.01 or $0.02 before. Maybe a result of similar processes? (I always assumed they were some kind of scam, since why the hell would someone sell a book so cheap?)
A similar thing happened to me as a seller. I saw that one of my old textbooks was selling for a nice price, so I listed it along with two other used copies. I priced it $1 cheaper than the lowest price offered, but within an hour both sellers had changed their prices to $.01 and $.02 cheaper than mine. I reduced it two times more by $1, and each time they beat my price by a cent or two. So what I did was reduce my p…
You could turn this into a book business. List books for sale that you don't own and this other publisher does own. Reduce the price over time until it is super cheap. Buy while it is low and resell it without the competition.
A similar thing happened to me as a seller. I saw that one of my old textbooks was selling for a nice price, so I listed it along with two other used copies. I priced it $1 cheaper than the lowest price offered, but within an hour both sellers had changed their prices to $.01 and $.02 cheaper than mine. I reduced it two times more by $1, and each time they beat my price by a cent or two. So what I did was reduce my p…
You could turn this into a book business. List books for sale that you don't own and this other publisher does own. Reduce the price over time until it is super cheap. Buy while it is low and resell it without the competition.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And (from what I understand) this is just the kind of thing that High Frequency Trading algorithms are doing.
> And (from what I understand) this is just the kind of thing that High Frequency Trading algorithms are doing. In stocks, there's almost always someone willing to buy and someone else willing to sell at any given price, so how are you going to drive the price down without selling stock?
...always like there's always people willing to buy books at amazon?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could turn this into a book business. List books for sale that you don't own and this other publisher does own. Reduce the price over time until it is super cheap. Buy while it is low and resell it without the competition.
isn't that how options work? selling something you don't own..
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And (from what I understand) this is just the kind of thing that High Frequency Trading algorithms are doing. In stocks, there's almost always someone willing to buy and someone else willing to sell at any given price, so how are you going to drive the price down without selling stock?
How is that so? ...always like there's always people willing to buy books at amazon?
A similar thing happened to me as a seller. I saw that one of my old textbooks was selling for a nice price, so I listed it along with two other used copies. I priced it $1 cheaper than the lowest price offered, but within an hour both sellers had changed their prices to $.01 and $.02 cheaper than mine. I reduced it two times more by $1, and each time they beat my price by a cent or two. So what I did was reduce my p…
One day earlier in his career Dall was in the market to buy (borrow) 50 million dollars. He checked around and found the money market was 4 per cent-4.25 per cent, which meant he could buy (borrow) at 4.25 per cent or sell (lend) at 4 per cent. When he actually tried to buy 50 million dollars at 4.25 per cent, however, the market moved to 4.25 per cent-4.5 per cent. The sellers were scared off by a large buyer. Dall bid 4.5. The market moved again, to 4.5p per cent-4.75 per cent. He raised his bid several more times with the same result, then went to Bill Simon’s office to tell him he couldn’t buy money. All the sellers were running like chickens.
“Then you be the seller,” said Simon.
So Dall became the seller, although he actually needed to buy. He sold 50 million dollars at 5.5 per cent. He sold another 50 million dollars at 5.5 per cent. Then, as Simon had guessed, the market collapsed. Everyone wanted to sell. There were no buyers. “Buy them back now,” said Simon when the market reached 4 per cent. So Dall not only got his 50 million dollars at 4 per cent but took a profit on the money he had sold at higher rates. That was how a Salomon bond trader thought: He forgot whatever it was that he wanted to do for a minute and put his finger on the pulse of the market. If the market felt fidgety, if people were scared or desperate, he herded them like sheep into a corner, then made them pay for their uncertainty. He sat on the market until it puked gold coins. Then he worried about what he wanted to do.