Welcome back, readers! Today I'm continuing my bi-weekly trend of looking over the MTG cards which have recently had the most financial movement (as well as the sealed product trends). Keeping with tradition I will start first with the "Penny Stocks".

Penny Stocks

#1 Maralen of the Mornsong (+220.9%) - This is a card which has seen a little Commander play (typically when it's a commander in a deck it acts as the "tutor" to get Ad Nauseam or some other black combo kill.

While most of us believe this one is a buyout it's hard to discount that this card plays really well with Ob Nixilis, Unshackled so there could definitely be some "staying power" to the price. While I do expect this spike to drop a bit, I doubt we'll see it back at it's old price anytime soon.

#2 Urza's Tower (Shore) (+50.4%) - This one seems a bit odd. It jumped about a month ago by almost 40%, but apparently dipped back down some and then rejumped again to its current price. I stated before that Tron decks are still played in Modern and they do seem to be branching out a bit (I read an article posted by Gerry T highlighting a mono-black Tron list).

#3 Chasm Stalker (+18.6%) - This was one of my picks from M15 that had some breakout potential. Though it hasn't done so yet, it appears that others feel the same way and demand has gone up recently. QS's own James Chilcot is a big fan of this guy, and I definitely would target these to even out trades.

#4 Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind (FTV:Dragons) (-15.2%) - This one might seem a bit perplexing, as FTV: Dragons was the first FTV, it's rather old, and Niv-Mizzet was a popular EDH general for awhile. I can attest to a few friends with Niv-Mizzet decks that have morphed them into Keranos, God of Storms decks. I don't know if this is a major shift in demand or perhaps players were getting tired of that style of EDH deck, but you can see that this trend has been occurring all year (and even demand for regular Niv Mizzet has been on the decline).

Either way, I wouldn't panic just yet, but I also don't expect to see the kind of demand for him as I used to. It also doesn't help that a lot of players don't like the FTV foiling process.

#5 Pack Rat (+14.4%) - This increase is rather perplexing. Despite Mono-Black Devotion's very strong Standard showings, its impending rotation would normally mean demand decreases and prices drop. However, this past week we did have a buyout of the foil Pack Rats and it's quite plausible that this guy is riding the coattails of his foil counterpart a bit.

Blue Chip Stocks

#1 Wasteland (-11.11%) - This one dropped quite a bit, erasing the gains from two weeks ago (and then some). There was no SCG Legacy tournament last week, so there's no new "deck of choice" to cause this drop. It is important to note that with the ascension of UWx Miracle decks, which don't run Wasteland, to arguably the "best deck" in the Legacy metagame, players who switch decks are dumping these (as an 11% drop is pretty major for a supposedly "stable" stock)

#2 Tundra (-4.73%) - Tundra is another of our previous week's top cards, though in that case it was on its way up. Ironically, this drop in demand directly contradicts my thought on Wasteland's drop (as the UWx Miracles players do run Tundras...usually 3-4). It could be that the number of sales of this card the past week or so hasn't been all that high and a few sales might affect our numbers here. That or all the top players have all decided to play Storm.

#3 Badlands (-4.6%) - B/R has often been one of the least desirable dual lands and its recent jump into the $80 range was heavily due to the jump in other dual lands, as well as a resurgence in the Jund archetype (which had been on the decline recently). The card is showing an overall decline in value (same as almost all of the duals since their spikes occurred).

#4 Dark Confidant (+3.51%) - Finally we have a gainer this week and it's a decent amount. Dark Confidant has the luxury of being one of the two "Blue Chip Stocks" that is both Modern and Legacy playable (with Tarmogoyf being the other).

While Pod style decks seem to still be the de facto "best deck" of Modern, the GBx midrange decks do seem to be gaining some ground (at least I see more people playing them locally then I did just a month or two ago). This is the only card on our "Blue Chip Stock" list that had positive gains this week.

#5 Scrubland (-3.33%) - Looks like another of our previous top gainers is falling right back down again. This could again be another example of the steady decline of the post-spike duals in general. This is the type of graph we expect to see when something's price is artificially spiked as opposed to actual market demand causing a price increase.

We need to carefully monitor these trends over the upcoming weeks, as the current trend is a bit disturbing (normally the "safe stocks" are stable, not trending negative across the board).

Value Stocks

My picks haven't really changed a whole lot, as I'm still all on board for rare mana fixing lands. I still like Mana Confluence the most, and the spoiling of the enemy "trilands" (similar to the Shards trilands) might imply that Khans will lack rare mana fixing lands (as Shards did) which means aggro decks will lean even heavier on Mana Confluence and pain lands.

That being said, while I still love the temples a lot (specifically Enlightment and Epiphany as they are the strongest Modern ones), I would like to put some focus on the "aggro" colored pain land, Battlefield Forge. Any aggro deck running RWx will need a full playset of these and time and time again we see R/x aggro decks come out of the gates as top dog at rotation.

Given the other red painland is Shivan Reef (and blue is rarely an "aggro" color), the only other painland that might get a bump is Caves of Koilos if a white aggro weenie deck materializes (though its recent reprinting as a four-of in the Modern Event Deck will likely mean that any price jump on this one will be far less severe). While I'm not a huge fan of any of the painlands getting a permanent price spike, I do foresee a 2-3 week window right after rotation with Battlefield Forge doubling up if (as we expect) a RWx aggro deck wins the first post-rotation SCG event. All that being said, here are my value stock picks this week:

Growth Stocks

This week we see overall gains across the board in both the entire Mirrodin block as well as the entire Zendikar block. As both blocks have a lot of powerful mythics that appeal to both casual and competitive players this isn't too surprising.