Whereas my local Costco has had continuous stock of massive piles of toilet paper available for over 2 weeks now. That's an arbitrage opportunity that's not being exploited because of the difficulty travelling.
Three months ago was January 14th. Perhaps you are being a mite hyperbolic?
Mid February is when Toilet Paper, Kitchen Towels, Facial Tissues, and Hand Sanitiser disappeared. My understanding is that masks went earlier, but I don't have direct knowledge of those.
There were no purchase limits then, and now every time they're restocked there's a pile of people buying up every single one of them in record time. There's video from my local supermarket of a whole pallet stacked high with toiletpaper being delivered, and disappearing in minutes.
No, that's correct, because you can't (profitably) buy a million masks to hoard them right now.
If you'd done it on January 1 though, you'd have been able to buy as many masks as you liked.
Selling them now? Is this the height of the crisis? Perhaps.
> Real people don't behave like this.
They do, but most people don't have millions of dollars to fuck around with.
But if they think they can make a quick buck, they'll happily empty shelves in the local stores of masks, hand sanitiser, toilet paper, etc, and then turn around and try selling it on for a huge markup.
This is why I've not seen a roll of toilet paper on shelves in my local supermarkets or stores for three months now. Nor a bottle of hand santitiser, nor masks of any kind. But hey, I jump on local buy&sell sites and there's heaps of it there, at 10-100x markups.
For most of these folks, it is/was fairly low risk - they had the free cash, and they thought they could always return it. Some of them are stuck with supplies they now can't sell on, or return - so they now have a few years worth of toilet paper and hand sanitiser, but hey - it's not a huge loss for them.