Economic Index

Probably a stupid question, although... I was wondering if someone could please explain this to me and what does it relate to? the amount of gil on each server?? the average price of an item??

hey Xspyrox, this is actually the first question answered in the FAQ for FFXIAH.com - here's the answer:

Q: What is the Economic Index on the front page?

A: Real-life stock exchanges, which track the value of individual corporations, have index numbers which represent the overall trends in the market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Nasdaq Composite, and the Nikkei Average (in Japan) are all examples of this.

The Economic Index on the front page is computed daily by taking a cross-section of approximately 30 reliable, stable, price-sensitive items that reflect overall trends in the economy, and then running a calculation to arrive at a number representing market trends. In general, if the Economic Index on a server is falling, that means the gil value of material items server-wide is also falling. Correspondingly, a rise in the economic index would indicate that the prices of items on a server are rising overall. It is interesting to note that since SquareEnix has begun mass-banning of RMT, the economic index has never posted a sustained period of positive growth.

In order to discourage artificial manipulation of the index number, we do not publish the list of which items are used in the calculation.