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I’ll talk about a few basic strategies. But first make sure you undersntad understand how the commodity futures market works. I assume you already know what are market orders, and trades.

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With shares, currencies, or in most other games (like SimcoSim Companies). Once you buy something on the market, it magically disappears from sellers warehosue warehouse and reappers reappears in yours. This doesn't happen with commodities.

The moment a trade is executed, the money change hands rightwayright away, but goods are not moved. The seller party has now obligation to deliver the commodity to the buyer. But goods are not moved, yet.

This is why we have orders (and trades) for each tick. If you sell Coal in T+3, it means you get money now, but you only need ot to deliver the coal in T+3. It will be automatically taken from your warehouse at tick computation.

Note: You can close the position yourself by executing reverse trade even before anythign anything is supposed to be delivered. At times, you can make profit like this, without any goods being moved.

If you are still not sure how futures market works, we have a more in-depth guide available here:

Sim Energy Market

Not fulfilling a delivery obligation

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The power works the same way, with the exception that it cannot be stored. We are ignoring batteries fot for the moment.

The power pricing mechanism ensures only power that is needed is produced. So how does the trading come into play?

Anyone can create positions by byuingbuying/selling power. The same amount that is sold, is also purchased, so in sum, it will still be zero. At the end of the tick, everyone has to have zero position, this is ensured by closing everyones everyone’s position by doing reverse trades at spot price.

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(It depends on circumstances: competitors int he in the city, weather forecast)

If you decide to hedge. You can go to the market, and execute sell orders for 30MWh for future ticks. Notice you got paid.

Now, one of 2 thigns things can happen:

A) You really produce the 30MWh in those ticks, which means your position will end up beign being zero. You have essentally produce produced 30MWh and sold for $290, regardless of the spot price

B) For some reason your plant does not run. Your short position will close automatically for spot price. So you will buy 30MWh back at spot price, so your position is zero. If the spot price ends up being $300, you take a slight loss. If the spot price ends up being very low, like $30, you made a huge profit, even though your plant did not run … Your plant likely did not run, casue cause the spot price was too low, but you do not care. You are a trader, you can make money, even without running plants. Let your competitors produce and sell power for $30, while you make profits selling at $290.

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This strategy is trickier to execute. It assumes you have majority of the production in the city to be able to influence spot price significantly, and that competitors did not hedge themselves.

You simply go to the maketmarket, sell a lot of power at high prices. Then set your plants to produce at $30 for those ticks.

If successful, the spot price will drop, messing profits for your competitors, while you woudl would be just delivering power agasint yout against you short positions. Still making considerable profits.

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This is another tricky strategy. A great control over city power production is nescessarynecessary. Imagine a city with low power spot prices for long time: $30 - $50 range. Everyone is eager to hedge themselves, and your competitors and city are offerign offering to sell power for relatively low prices: $100 - $150 range.

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At this point, switch part of your infrastrucutre infrastructure to maintenance/upgrade/sleep, whatever, just make sure it's not producing. The other part of your infrastruture infrastructure should be producign producing at $300, to make sure the spot price is pushed up as high as possible.

What’s going to happen is that your long positions will be closing at $300 spot price, generating extra profit.

It’s best to masterfuly master your time in this strategy with the point where city popualtion population stops degrading and starts to grow, making it easier to rocket the spot price. It also doesn't hurt to take weather forceast forecast into consideration.

Milk the subsidies

You may have noticed that at the very beginning, your base city compensates you if the spot price is very low. The first 16 ticks, you get compensation if the spot price is below $220.

So imagine these scenriosscenarios:

A) You produce 50MWh and sell for $300. Great price, subsidies not needed, $15,000 profit!

B) You produce 50MWh, the spot price is very low $30, subsidies jump in, you get (30 + 190). $11,000 profit: Not good, not terrible (wink)

C) You are the Wolf of WallstreetWall Street. Sell 50MWh on the market for $290, then drop the spot price to $30, adjudting adjusting plants pricing strategy. You will get (260 market + 30 production + 190 subsidy) per MWh. Whopping $480 per MWh: $24,000 profit! That will leave your competitors in dust.