theory

Lower costs, undercutting, technical development, patent hoarding, scalability, and bought government patronage are how regulating capitals generate the "gravitational profits" other firms in their sector orbit, including other regulating capitals, because leading capitals also regulate each other, even across sectors

Creating not sustained perfect or even imperfect equilibrium, but instead turbulent equalization of prices, equalization is the reason you can ask the average Joe on the street what the price of milk is and they'll give you a rough and accurate estimation of the price, even if milk prices turbulently rise and fall over the long years, even though milk prices are equalized across the country around an average: $3-5 in this case

And like perfect competition is fiction, there's also no such thing as "imperfect competition" because that idea also arises right out of the liberal whine about workers, firms and governments "cheating" the market of it's "rightful" returns. No, there's only competition-as-war, that's what defines capital accumulation; profits arise from those firms that can cut costs and undercut their competitors, raising prices is only a secondary bonus if you can get away with it before bumping into another regulator, what's important is lowering costs which is why I placed it first amongst the list of profit generators and also why the wage vs profit contradiction is always the most important aspect of the system in general

From those two simple ideas (low costs and undercutting) arise everything we see under capitalism; the regulation of supply and demand by profitability, the everlasting desire to suppress wages that cut into profits, the drive toward technical developments to make production easier and cheaper, the cowardly need of all capitalists to run away from competition and toward rent-seeking behaviors etc.

Regulating capitals are large armies trying to keep at bay a 100 smaller armies from eating their lunch, and the 100 smaller armies are also competing amongst each other, one year a mid sized army may discover how to make a better cannon and they supplant a leading regulator and take its place, another year a small army figures out how to conscript more soldiers and they overwhelm a dozen other smaller competitors, putting themselves one step closer to becoming the regulator instead of the regulated

Profits comes from firms picking the right combinations at the right time from these options: Lower costs, technical development, undercutting, patent hoarding, scalability, and government patronage but lower costs is typically the primary, go-to solution