Crafting Materials:
I've been reading things on the forums and people have been asking whether or not commodity prices are falling, rising or plateauing. Well as seen in the past 2~3 days, commodity prices have responded vigorously to the recent patch notes due to the paragon level addition Rubies shot up (as well as plans), but have stabillised. Also brimstone and essences also rose above average but are now again stabilizing. My advice to readers is that you buy these crafting mat within the next 1~2days (within the week of the patch), because as the goods are sold at high prices yet demand is so high, the price is going at a lower than average price at the current state. Thus as a short-term investment crafting mat will see an all-time or month low, before rising when the demand cools off.

Crafting Materials Advice : Strong Buy.

MF and GF gear:
MF and GF got nerfed relatively hard with the introduction of paragon levels, with 3% MF And GF per paragon level and with some of my friends on paragon level 15, it won't take long for a majority of the D3 community to get to paragon level 100. This means that these players no longer have to buy MF and GF items, furthermore Blizzard had stated in their forums of the prospect of getting rid of MF and GF completely due to the item swap "glitch". Thus with MF and GF items going pricy currently, these will see a gradual fall in prices over time. For maximum gain I suggest that you sell MF and GF right now before prices start dropping. I put a rating of sell, instead of strong sell, because I am not completely sure if Blizzard will get rid of MF and/or GF gear yet. However do realise that once Blizzard makes an announcement stating that MF and GF will be removed, prices will fall instantly.

MF and GF gear: Sell

Legendary Plans:
Plans like the crafting mats will be lower than the market price and will also most likely hit an all-time or monthly-low. I suggest that people may look to these plans as investments, but because of their costly-ness people should regard these as high risk investments and should not invest into them if they do not like taking risks.

Legendary Plans: Mild Buy

Long Term Investment:
As most people know theres this thing called inflation in an economy, in other words prices of all goods and services will rise in the economy. The D3 auction house can be seen to have an economy on its own and therefore may be regarded similarly, all goods (commodities as well as weapons/armor) will see their prices rise. However as in the global economy, commodity goods have the most stability, yet the greatest shocks, in other words, prices will remain similar, but will rise greatly due to some effect (like the patches), thus as long term investment goods, commodities will be the best choice, and may offer the greatest profits caused by certain economic shocks.

Long Term Investments: Commodities (Especially crafting mat)

PLEASE NOTE THAT I AM NOT A CERTIFIED EXPERT IN THE FIELD OF ECONOMICS, NEITHER AM I SOME STOCK MARKET GENIUS, IM JUST AN ECON GRAD AND GIVING MY OPINIONS ON THE D3 ECONOMY. I WILL NOT TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITIES FOR ANY LOSSES MADE ON THE D3 AUCTION HOUSE, SO DONT COME TO ME FOR COMPENSATION :D.

Peace out guys - GLHF Investing

It's an interesting post and I have a few counterpoints.

Crafting Materials:
I'm not so sure i agree with this assessment given the history of these materials. There is a price floor on Exquisite Essence due to Vend prices and I don't think we've hit the bottom - historically, that was about 525 Gold / Essence. At 875 Gold / Essence, I think the market has a lot of room to decrease to reach bottom. Pre-patch crafting weapons wasn't nearly as profitable and the long-term baseline price was between 800 and 900. Inflation notwithstanding, the improvement in crafting weapons could push the baseline price a little above that. The current price of 875 Gold doesn't really look underpriced to me.

MF and GF gear:
Paragon Level experience scale. The time it took your friends to reach Level 15 is the same time it will take to reach Level 22. Then that much time to reach Level 28, then Level 33, then Level 37, etc, etc. Heavy players will not even be hitting Level 50 for a few weeks and the casual players will never hit Level 50. MF/GF gear will pretty much always have some value. It might be a little inflated now, but it's almost never going to be entirely worthless.

Legendary Plans:
Your premise here is that because materials will cost less, the plans will cost more? I'm not really sure I see that logic.

Long-term Investment:
I pretty much agree here in terms of the commodities having something of a Gold price floor due to Vendor prices on Lvl 61+ gear. No one will salvage a Lvl 61 item if they can only sell an Exquisite Essence for 200 Gold, but as long as people are crafting, there will be demand for Essence that will drive up the prices. There will probably be some sort of equilibrium reached which would scale with inflation. As long as you can get them at a low price, no higher than 700, they'll probably do well to hang onto until the next patch when they can be sold for a premium.

What's the deal with people undercutting iridescent tears down to 52 gold a piece.. Do they not realize they sell in game for 52?

@LSOLive, A handful of people probably don't know it sells for 52. Many others probably don't care about the 15% loss compared to vendor, anyway. 2 or 3 weeks ago, Square Emeralds were going for under their Vendor price by a few gold and bought as many as I could until they increased to Vend price. Ah, those were the days. If there were an unlimited supply at 52 Gold, and want to try to flip them, you can stack up to 60,000 in a dummy account's inventory at a cost of 3,120,000. The break even point is 62 Gold taking into account auction fees. That would make a complete sale at 3,720,000 Gold = 3,162,000 after fees or a 1.3% profit.

Note, I don't recommend this.