Halloween Candy Corn Investment

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The finely named joey2beers asked a couple of questions in a pair of comments about candy corn investment in yesterday's mad king chest post. He asked (basically): 

I feel like if I don't bail on my investment of nearly 5,000 candy corn now I'm going to lose out? Am I being paranoid?

 There are absolutely tons on the market for 10 copper and I'm not sure the desirability there. I'm praying they jump up after Halloween but I'm quite sceptical.

I thought these were good questions and my comment response got a bit long winded so I started drafting up this post. 

There are a few things I want to look at here. First, will candy corn be desirable after the holidays? Second, will supply decrease? Finally, are there other things worth investing in? Or how much is too much? 

Let's answer the easiest first - supply will definitely decrease. There will be no more candy corn entering the market. That we know of - and this is an important thing to bear in mind. 

Arenanet may make them accessible through some forge recipe or something of that nature (I highly doubt this but never rule out possibilities completely). 

Will candy corn prove to be desirable after Halloween? If supply decreases but there's no demand then it's not that great an investment right? I think candy corn will remain in demand. Check out this gw2db list of recipes that require candy corn. 

I think demand will drop just after Halloween because there are themed event uses for the corn. Like trading 50 corn to the kids in Lion's Arch to get a personalised trick or treat bag and a chance at an endless halloween tonic (one example of extra Halloween candy corn uses). Look at how close the supply/orders are at the moment: 

You'll lose some of that demand post event. Hard to say how much. But there'll be (as far as we can tell) no more candy corn until next halloween - that's IF arenanet bring the same material back. They more than likely will but if they don't. Boy. 

I know there are dozens - probably hundreds of folks who've invested in candy corn because they believe it'll be worth something later. Of these investors, only a handful are the most patient. I'm thinking in terms of 4 months or more. That's aeons in MMO time. I have visions of corn going for a silver a piece this far down the line and though it's optimistic, it might not be unrealistic.

When you think in this time scale it's very hard to see candy corn as a poor investment. Keeping your money in gold is worse. Inflation - though Arenanet need to counter it to avoid a loss in gem revenue - will still inevitably devalue your in-game money. 

Even if candy corn proves to be less desirable than predicted. Even if there's close to 1 million corn in investor's pockets now. There's still very little chance you'll be burned by holding onto corn at the current low rates. 

The nervousness joey2beers feels there is entirely normal when investing - have I made the right call? Am I going to lose out? 5,000 corn at 10 copper is 5 gold. That's not a small amount of money at the moment. But when items are 10 copper and below the very worst you can do is lose 9/10th of that  investment. There's a bottom limit there - a cushion. So long as it's not your total funds you'll learn and be smarter and wiser. My advice is to leave a host of orders at half that too - 5 copper. You're even better insulated. 

Here's my final tip for today: develop balls of steel (and that's not aimed at joey in particular but all of us!)

Investing is never going to give you a 100% positive return. But if you bail before an investment reaches the period when you've calculated (logically) you'll start seeing good returns then you'll always be sitting on around the same gold total in your pot. 

Share your own thoughts, I'm looking forward to them!

Thundergore