Inactive/Overnight Flipping

by **Phileep** 10/2/2015, 10:10 pm

What is an Inactive Flip?
There are two great differences between inactive flipping and actively flipping, and both are quite straightforward. Firstly, inactive flips have given more time to complete, and therefore (secondly) when buying you also have more limits available to use. For most items, both of these two factors will combine to create an enhanced flipping experience. The greater amount of literal time means there's a better chance that your buys (or sells) will complete and you'll be getting, on average, more transactions completed, which should mean more profit.

Additionally, when buying, if your inactive flip lasts for more than 4 hours then you'll get access to more buying limits, meaning you won't necessarily be restricted to buying only 9 items for your flip. In a 4-8 hour flip you could potentially buy up to 19 for your flip, in a 8-12 hour flip you could potentially buy 29 for your flip, and so on. This does rest on the contingency that the margins stay the same, but that problem can be mitigated by good item choice, which will be discussed a bit later. Also, it should be noted that the efficiency of the flip goes up with inactive flipping in the sense that less money is spent on margin-checking and full limits of 10 can be flipped after the first limit passes.

Examples
I mentioned in the previous paragraph that the two advantages existed "for most items". That was deliberate; there are some items that both advantages don't apply to, but in those cases one of the two advantages still apply. I'll give some examples here of what I mean. Firstly, here is an example of a "normal inactive flip". In this flip I took advantage of both the fact that I was getting more limits, and made use of the extra time I had to buy. I used 3 limits to get 28 buys, and also those 28 buys would not have all completed within a narrow active time frame.

Now here is an example of a special case, because technically I only bought 1 limit of Vesta's chainskirts, but because the volume of Vesta's chainskirts is so low it took a very long time to complete. So, although I technically did not make use of the ability to buy more than 1 limit, choosing to flip inactively was still very beneficial to me simply because of the time involved in executing the flip.

How Do I Inactively Flip?
Actually flipping inactively is quite straightforward, because the methods are almost exactly the same as those used in actively flipping. You will still price check an item as usual, by instantly buying to get the high price, then instantly selling to get the low price, and then setting a buy offer just above the instant sell price. There is a slight difference with selling, though.

Indeed, in an active flip you would throw purchased items in at just below the high price you checked, but in inactive flips that isn't always the best idea, because with the longer time frame of the flip it's quite possible that the margin shifted around slightly and the high price is no longer where it once was. Therefore, if you're not on a limit with the item it's often a good idea to instantly buy the item again in order to recheck the high price. This price check does not really cost anything, because you're not going to instantly sell the item (you don't need to know the low price anymore!) and can simply sell it at the high price undercut along with the rest of your items.

Also note that this price check is generally helpful no matter how the price changed. If the high price went up, then you will want to know so that you're able to price you items higher and make even more profit off the flip than you'd expected. Even if the high price went down, you'd want to be aware of that so you could sell your items much more quickly at an up-to-date price. Alternatively you could try and hold out for the high price to rebound, but that's really more of an investment decision than a flipping one, and thus even then you'd want to be price checking the item in the usual investing fashion, so a post-buy price check is still a good move.

Which Items Should I Inactively Flip?
So now that you know how to inactively flip the next question, naturally, is "what should one flip inactively?". The textbook answer would be that you should inactively flip items that you think benefit most from the two key advantages of inactive flipping, i.e. more time and more limits. But that answer isn't particularly helpful. Instead, think simply of lower volume, low limit, or more obscure items. Lower volume items will need more time to complete, so they're a natural choice to inactively flip.

Armors are often a good choice from within that category, so things like Barrows sets or similar 10/4 armors often work out to be good flips. Lower limit items could be things like Tectonic, Sirenic, or Malevolent Armors, since they're 2/4, or Treasure Trails items. Just be sure not to pick items that are pc'd by a well-established fc, or I should say do so at your own risk (flipping fc items inactively in the standard fashion is a little redundant because fcs supply the prices for you and there's not much value in self-checking it.) More obscure items also benefit from inactively flipping for the normal reasons, but there's a little additional benefit in that you're less likely to get overcut or undercut, which can be particularly detrimental to inactive flips. I would list some obscure items for you, but then they wouldn't really be obscure anymore, now would they? In any case, be sure that there is still some supply and demand on those "obscure" items otherwise they'll take far too long to be considered "inactive", and will also tend to be rubbish flips.

Indications
One of the most important additional things to consider when flipping inactively is how the item's price is changing over time, i.e. its trends. Items can be flipped with any trend: increasing, decreasing, stagnant, or anything in-between. However, the trend does make a difference as to whether or not you decide to flip an item with the margin you found, so I'll explain now the two simplest ways to predict an items trend. The two easiest indicators are an item's high and low prices relative to Ge Market Value and an item's graph.

Because the Ge Market Value is some sort of averaging of past transactions of the item, you know that when an item's high and low prices are above Ge Market Value all transactions (at that time) are occurring above Ge Market Value. The average will, therefore, be driven up by the occurrence of those higher than Market Value transactions. This means the item is on an upward trend. The opposite can be proven in the same way. When the high and low prices are both below Ge Market Value, then the item is on a downward trend. Do note that there is some uncertainty here, because you can simply price check an item at an unlucky time at which the high and low prices are not representative of the trend for the rest of the day, but for such a simple indicator it's true quite often.

The second indicator for easily estimating trends is an item's graph. I won't talk about that in great detail here, as interpreting graphs is an uncertain art in itself, and not super important to inactively flipping anyway, but I will mention that if an item's graph indicates that it has been rising and the graph doesn't appear to be leveling off then it is probably still on the rise. As usual, for items with falling prices, the same is true in the other direction. If an item's graph shows that it has been steadily falling the the graph doesn't appear to be leveling off, then it is probably still falling. If both of these simple to check factors point to the same conclusion, you can predict a trend with some confidence. Below is, for your reference, an example graph where I've circled points where the graph is "leveling off." (Leveling off is an indication of a trend reversal.)

How to React to Trends
Even with inactive flipping, we're still just flipping, so we're not necessarily trying to hold onto items that we think should rise—that would be something closer to investing. But because we do end up holding items for longer periods of time by the very nature of the flips, the trends are good to note and consider when making flips.

When an item is falling, you have to have a bigger than normal (normal being what you would normally flip) margin in consideration that the item's high price will probably have fallen by the time you get to selling your items. When an item is rising, you have to also consider that the low price could very well move up from the point you checked when began your flip, so you may by far less stock than you anticipated, however the profits from each item that you do buy could be increased as a result of a favorable change in the item's high price. Again, correct predictions of trends are not essential to inactively flipping, but they do open the door to more skillfully executed flips, and thus higher profits, so working toward mastering finding and reacting to trends is definitely a good idea.