I think I'm missing something

I was under the impression that trading in RS would involve buying large amounts of something when its price cycle is low and waiting for the price to go up. This is what I was doing on my own. However, upon joining this forum to learn more, it seems that everyone does something called flipping, which, according to the guides I've read, takes place over the course of hours rather than days. I don't understand how the price of something could change that quickly unless there's some kind of special event going on. I just don't understand the principle of it, and I had a completely different idea of what rs trading would be. All the guides I've read are talking about stuff that's completely not what I thought it was, and I don't really understand it.

So, what does this mean? Is investing in something to resell later not something that's done? How does "flipping" work, and where do I go to learn the first thing about it? All the guides I've seen seem to assume that the reader already understands flipping, but they just don't know how to do it. I don't even know what it is, or rather, I thought I did but apparently I don't.

Also, if flipping is this active thing that happens in like an hour, what have I been doing this whole time? I would buy something, say, several million water runes when they were 13 gold, and sell them a week later when they were 20 gold. Is there a name for that? Does anyone do it or have I just been wasting my time?

What you're doing is called investing. Every item has a lowest high offer and a highest low offer in the GE at any one point in time. The difference in these is potential profit. Flipping is when you buy items for a low price and turn around and sell them for a higher price. If done right, flips can be anywhere from minutes (active flipping) to hours (inactive flipping). Investing is when you stock a certain item when it's at a low and waiting for it to rise.

For example, right now I could probably PC cannonballs, instant buy one (fake prices) at around 350gp, sell it back instantly for around 346 gp. I would then put an offer in for 10k cannonballs (the 4 hour limit of this item) at 347gp each, and once they start buying, sell them at 349 gp each for a grand total of 20k from that flip. Naturally this isn't the only flip you would do, and that's a fairly bad margin, but this is an example of something that could complete within minutes and require no external events - this is just bridging the gap of the trading prices. Commonly you flip lesser traded items, such as t90 weapons, that have less volume, and thus more of a gap/margin for you to manipulate. Some t90s have up to 1m margins if you do it correctly.

Investing is a very common as well, so you're not alone, in fact the majority of new merchants do primarily investments for future updates such as double xp weekends or new bosses, which is why a lot of weapons or raw materials are unstable around these times.

Thank you, that cleared things up for me. So flipping is buying things on the low end of the average price and selling them on the high end of the average price, and investing is waiting for the overall price to rise?

Coffin Henry wrote:Thank you, that cleared things up for me. So flipping is buying things on the low end of the average price and selling them on the high end of the average price, and investing is waiting for the overall price to rise?

it's a little more complicated than that, but yes, flipping is much more short term than investing

Flipping uses the basic mechanics of how the ge works to make a profit, where as investing is about reading changes in the market to predict rises and falls in price.

What you've been doing, investing, can be much harder for many ppl to learn, but it usually makes bigger profits. Flipping however can make money faster if your really active.

The mechanics flipping relies on is that the ge always tries to give you the best price. So when you buy something it gives you the cheapest one on the ge and likewise when you sell something it gives you the highest price. This way you can easily find the price range to buy quickly and sell quickly for profit. I know it sounds weird, but it is how the ge works. Maybe this guide will explain it more for you http://www.smokinelite.com/t79598-how-the-ge-works