> nobody would be buying a million masks to hoard in a bunker right now.
No, that's correct, because you can't (profitably) buy a million masks to hoard them right now.
If you'd done it on January 1 though, you'd have been able to buy as many masks as you liked.
Selling them now? Is this the height of the crisis? Perhaps.
> Real people don't behave like this.
They do, but most people don't have millions of dollars to fuck around with.
But if they think they can make a quick buck, they'll happily empty shelves in the local stores of masks, hand sanitiser, toilet paper, etc, and then turn around and try selling it on for a huge markup.
This is why I've not seen a roll of toilet paper on shelves in my local supermarkets or stores for three months now. Nor a bottle of hand santitiser, nor masks of any kind. But hey, I jump on local buy&sell sites and there's heaps of it there, at 10-100x markups.
For most of these folks, it is/was fairly low risk - they had the free cash, and they thought they could always return it. Some of them are stuck with supplies they now can't sell on, or return - so they now have a few years worth of toilet paper and hand sanitiser, but hey - it's not a huge loss for them.
> This is why I've not seen a roll of toilet paper on shelves in my local supermarkets or stores for three months now.
Whereas my local Costco has had continuous stock of massive piles of toilet paper available for over 2 weeks now. That's an arbitrage opportunity that's not being exploited because of the difficulty travelling.
Mid February is when Toilet Paper, Kitchen Towels, Facial Tissues, and Hand Sanitiser disappeared. My understanding is that masks went earlier, but I don't have direct knowledge of those.
There were no purchase limits then, and now every time they're restocked there's a pile of people buying up every single one of them in record time. There's video from my local supermarket of a whole pallet stacked high with toiletpaper being delivered, and disappearing in minutes.
No, that's correct, because you can't (profitably) buy a million masks to hoard them right now.
If you'd done it on January 1 though, you'd have been able to buy as many masks as you liked.
Selling them now? Is this the height of the crisis? Perhaps.
> Real people don't behave like this.
They do, but most people don't have millions of dollars to fuck around with.
But if they think they can make a quick buck, they'll happily empty shelves in the local stores of masks, hand sanitiser, toilet paper, etc, and then turn around and try selling it on for a huge markup.
This is why I've not seen a roll of toilet paper on shelves in my local supermarkets or stores for three months now. Nor a bottle of hand santitiser, nor masks of any kind. But hey, I jump on local buy&sell sites and there's heaps of it there, at 10-100x markups.
For most of these folks, it is/was fairly low risk - they had the free cash, and they thought they could always return it. Some of them are stuck with supplies they now can't sell on, or return - so they now have a few years worth of toilet paper and hand sanitiser, but hey - it's not a huge loss for them.