What f**kery, through yonder market breaks??

     So, a few days back, I was checking some prices, and was fairly surprised to see the mineral prices tanking, and tanking hard, mainly, seemingly, in Jita.  Now, by "tanking", I merely refer to sub-six isk per unit figures for things like tritanium.  Interesting, and I was wondering why, seeing as how we were into HA5, plus the drone alloy effects of the last update.

     In the case of tritanium, volumes started to drop off even in the first week of April, which was well before the update/HA scare was noticeable, I think, but just after the highest prices.  Highest prices, decreasing volumes - not unexpected.  As prices stayed high, in the low 6's, volumes started to drop off.  looked like some big buy orders were filled at roughly the same time each week, and as the buy volumes dropped, so did the prices drop slightly.  At one point a few days ago, the price nearly dropped into the low 5's per unit in Jita, and stayed close to that for a day or two as all the Jita mineral prices seemed to tank.  It struck me as weird, almost like someone dropped a ton of minerals on the market and the market bots all sort of freaked out a little.  Not sure what the criteria are for the market bots, but I might go download one and see how they work, and what they look for.  Stockmarket software sometimes goes into a feeding frenzy - maybe the bots do too, or can be induced to do so.  This big drop concerned me a little as I hoped it wasn't going to be a trend as if someone with deep pockets and a huge stock pile of minerals was dumping them on the market.

     Things seem more normalized now with low volatility and slowly rising prices.  Supply vs demand is still running at about 1 to 3, so that will help stop a slide and should slowly boost prices again as hulkageddon continues.  Prices are generally a little lower than they were near the end of April, but as I continue to stockpile minerals, likely as a large number of players are doing, I'm hoping another week of hulkageddon will  boost the prices a little higher than they were and allow a little more of a profit.  If not, I'll still likely be close to breaking even, and the month of HA has only diminished the the mining yields by about 10% due to the hulks' armour boosts and shield drone usage.  Still have more than enough cash to PLEX all 7 accounts for about 3 months, so no real pressure to make truck loads of cash in high risk systems.