RuneScape Solo Merchanting Guide

1. Fundamental trading

This is the simplest method and resembles the most to the merchanting that occurred before the GE was introduced.  It is basically buying a stable item and selling it for more.

Most people will sell an item for min when they want to get rid of it quickly or don’t want to wait for it to sell for medium and take up a GE slot, and will buy an item for max when they really need it. You can exploit this and put in an offer to buy the item for a low price then sell it on to the person who needs it right now for a higher price.
Some good items that can be used for this are cannon balls (can normally buy the max, 10k, for min then sell them for medium after the 4 hours are over pretty quickly), blood runes, yew longs, dds, monkfish, addy bolts and cow hides. A good place to look for items is the Top traded list on the GE page.
The best items to use for fundamental trading are items which disappear from the game or are transformed into something else, such as food, arrows/bolts and yew longs, which are usually alched.
You can usually buy an item for around 2.5% less than the market price and then sell it for 2.5% above market. This of course varies with different items, so you will have to experiment and find the best price to buy/sell at. If an item is going up in price, you might want to buy it for 2% under market and sell it for 3% above.
This is the safest way of merching using the ge, as long as you use a stable item. If you use all your money and use different items, you can increase your overall wealth by around 5% every 4 hours. For example, if you have 100m, you can make around 5m every 4 hours.

2. Technical trading/investing

Technical trading is using short-term trends(watching graphs) to predict whether an item is going to go up or down and using this to make a profit.
Technical trading can be a lot more rewarding that fundamental trading, but it is also much riskier and harder.

3. Converting items

This is a common favourite method and it can be very rewarding if you find a good method.
This type of merchanting involves buying an item, changing it slightly, and selling it for a higher price. The great thing about this is that if you change an item, you will not have to wait 4 hours before being able to sell it again. Some examples of this include set merching, decanting, charging glories, etc.
Two methods that I used in the past and that still work well are buying black masks (1) or (2) for min in ge, wasting the charge and then selling the mask for med/max in ge to people wanting it to make a slayer mask and wizard (t) set merching, where you buy all the pieces of the set for min and then sell the set for max.
You can use most sets to make money this way. You can also buy 3 dose potions for med, decant them and sell them for max. If you can find a different method that is profitable, then lucky you!

General tips:
- Always buy/sell items a couple of gp above or below the price you want to sell or buy the item at. That way, you will have an advantage over most people in getting the item at the price you want.
- The GE trade limits are as follows:
25k per 4 hours for runes, logs and ores.
20k for fish.
10k for bars, spirit shards, food, herbs, pots, bones, feathers, soft clay, cowhide, arrows and vials.
5k for gems and bows.
1k for jewellery and seeds.
100 for flatpacks and most armour and weps.
10 for barrows and gwd armour.
2 for rares and treasure trail rewards.

Now that you’ve learned some essential merchanting techniques get yourself to the Grand Exchange and up your wealth!