Predicting the economy is one of the more fun and challenging aspects of WoW. The parallels with the RL economy are quite strong.

Uncertainty

Here are the main factors that will affect demand and pricing after 3.1:

(1) Is your server mostly casual or do you have a lot of raiding guilds?
(2) Will Ulduar stay easy (as it has been on PTR) or be up-tuned significantly before release?
(3) How many other people are stockpiling for 3.1? And what items and quantities?
(4) How will the known and not-yet-known changes to characters, items and professions affect prices after 3.1?

These factors are not all known to you, so you have to guess. And yet they affect what you should hold and how much of it you should hold. For example, if Ulduar is easy, a lot of people will need gear-enhancement mats: enchanting mats, gems, leg threads/kits, belt buckles. If it's hard, demand will be much lower. If frost lotuses drop with much higher frequency after the herbing nerf, stockpiling those was a bad idea. If unrestricted epic gems are suddenly announced for 3.1, your gem stockpiles just became worthless. And so on...

Some things are well-agreed on: Dual-specs will cause a spike in glyph pricing, followed by a very limited market (levelers, people who can't justify the cost of dual-spec'ing and the odd triple-spec'er). But mostly it's all a big unknown.

Meanwhile, we're in a holding pattern: most guilds worth their salt have been farming all current content for months. Many are taking breaks (warcraftrealms.com supports this: the number of players is down sharply in recent weeks). This means the AH inventory is smaller than it was 2 months ago both because people are not playing and because people are reserving inventory for a hopeful payoff after 3.1.

To Sell or not to Sell

That is the question, isn't it. There is no clear-cut answer. If you could foresee the future, things would be a lot easier. Any decision you make carries risk, and it's largely a matter of personality how much risk you're comfortable with. Some prominent bloggers like Gevlon are investing very little in speculation. I, however, have gone quite overboard.

No one asked for my recommendation, but here it is: if you can decent make money, sell stuff now. If prices are up 10% over the norm, and you think they'll be 30% over the norm during patch week, I'd still sell now. Why? Apart from massive inflation, there is no risk in holding gold, but the other items carry risk. Secondly, putting capital back to work will likely net you more profit in the next 3-5 weeks than doing nothing and then selling at the higher price.

I've thought about this a ton, but there are a lot of intelligent people on this forum. Share your thoughts!

Until someone level's a blacksmith/enchanter. Also depends on price of Eternal Earth. I can produce a shard on demand for ~6g on my server. Converting 6 saronite ore into 1 shard. The leg plates are BoP however, so you must be both a blacksmith and an enchanter.

I've been staying afloat after recently becoming a JC. I'm getting rings DEd as I find relatively cheap saronite ore stacks. I'm holding onto blues for 3.1 and picking up JC cuts in the meantime.

So, that being said, has anyone lowered their threshold price for buying saronite ore? I started out buying anything under 20g, but now I won't touch any stacks 18g or over. I try to wait out for ~15-16g stacks.

Also of note, Large Dream Shards have dropped in value on my server; at least in the last day or two. They are now right around the price of GCEs ~15g each. If I had the money, I'd create a small stockpile as I predict a price jump. I can't tell if it's because people are holding back in anticipation of 3.1, or if there has been a rash of people leveling Enchanting that have caused the price dip.



Re: stockpiling - I've picked up some Icy Dragonscales on the cheap, and I'm keeping a lookout for Frost Lotus, Titansteel, and Arctic Fur at value; but with little luck. Frost Lotus won't drop below 10-12g, and I don't think it's going to jump enough to make a major investment. Titansteel, similarly, won't dip below 82g or so for one. I just don't have the capital that I'm willing to risk to get into this more heavily.


Finally, has anyone speculated on the value of Shifting Twilight Opal? My guess is initial prices will have them close to Delicate and Bright Scarlet Rubies (~110g or so) and then drop to other opal prices (~30-50g). For non-JC DPS, this will be the gem of choice for blue slots.

That's true, that's why it is probably wiser to just stockpile on cooldowned items.
Another thing that I forgot to mention and that I think will work pretty well in the few weeks after the patch drops are enchanting mats. Currently [Infinite Dust] and [Greater Cosmic Essence] have hit rock bottom, so it may not be a bad idea to buy cheap now, and hope to sell at a premium later.