Sow Joan is a humble turnip seller that will appear in your village every Sunday from 6 AM to noon. Joan sells turnips in batches of ten, the price varying between 90 to 110 Bells for each individual turnip. Turnips have similar properties to fruit, as you can consume them, but their main function is to be used in the Stalk Market detailed below. Turnips will not last forever and quickly rot after a week, while time-traveling through manipulation of the in-game clock will instantly cause them to rot.
The Stalk Market
The Stalk Market is a simplified version of the real life stock market, with turnips representing the stocks. Every day after Sunday, you can ask Reese about the price of an individual turnip, then decide whether to sell your turnips. The price changes twice each day, first when Re-Tail opens for business, the second by noon. The Stalk Market is all about turning in a profit, and with some strategy and luck, you can make a ton of Bells.
There are limitless strategies you can employ when investing in the Stalk Market. Do you play it safe and purchase a few batches, or do you spend hundreds of thousands buying up hundreds of batches for a huge potential profit? Should you sell part of your total amount day by day, or sell off the whole batch at once? Do you sell your turnips as long as there is even the tiniest profit, or wait till the next day when you might get a much larger profit, but risk getting a heavy loss? The Stalk Market is definitely not for everyone, but it is an interesting mini-game that involves decision-making and risk-taking in a game that is otherwise devoid of strategy.
There are four patterns that turnip prices can take throughout the week, and spotting these patterns can help the player make the necessary decisions to turn in the maximum profit. Be sure to look out for the two price spike patterns. The only thing that distinguishes the two is an additional increasing prices, so deciding when to sell is especially key to getting the maximum profit.
- Continuous Decrease: This is the worst pattern you can get. At the start of the week, the selling price of each turnip will be between 99 and 50 Bells, which will decrease for the rest of the week. If there isn't a positive change by the latter half of the week, sell all of your turnips to minimize your loss.
- Sudden Price Spike: This pattern features a price that constantly decreases, but also features three increasing prices, with the third being the highest of the week. The maximum price of the week always follows two increasing prices and precedes two decreasing prices, so it can't occur on Monday or Saturday.
- Gradual Price Spike: This pattern features a price that constantly decreases, but also features four increasing prices, with the fourth being the highest of the week. The maximum price of the week always follows three increasing prices and precedes one decreasing price, so it can't occur before Tuesday afternoon or after Saturday morning.
- Erratic: This pattern is just random price changes between 50 and 200 Bells. There really is no way to predict when is the best time to sell your turnips.