As a Demo, you almost have to play the market to take full advantage of the strat. In other to play the market you have to understand it which means you have to study it.

You won't believe hte incredibly feat and risk needed to bring prices up. It cost me about $2.5 bill to bust up oil last set. Over $4 bill to get res/bus techs up. Food was too much too often to calculate. Ok, I wouldn't say it cost me that much, since in most of the cases except for food, indy tech and weapins tech, I made the money back and more. To bring prices up, you have to compete with noobs in that specific market, be it tech, oil, or food. You have to contend with a shrewd player that could be trying to bring it down for their own benefit. You also have to contend with ppl just playing the game the way they know how.

On the other hand, to bring prices down, it doesn't take much. You place a good at the right price and someone comes to play turns at the right time and decides to undercut that price, and it could all go down hil lfrom there. That is the reason some cashers will put res/bus tech on the market real low to trigger a downward spiral in prices. It is probably harder to do in Primary since it takes a 4-6 hrs for it to hit the market.

An example, last set I sold north of 1.5 million tech points in spy. That is a market that can easily be shot quickly by 25-50 tech point priced low. If I iddn't explore, I doubt anyonw would have known there was a market there in the 1st place.