Market Discussions

yeaaa genius, he said it a cple times that he doesnt want an simple investment in this challenge, but nice try.

Although, Eve has inflationary and deflationary cycles and bursts. The over-all average is about 1% inflation. If you can buy during the peak of deflation and sell during the peak of inflation, you could stand to make a non-zero amount real valued money. Not sure how much though. And it sounds a bit more boring.

Character trading and character parking business.

As long as EVE is in growth and the economy also, this would always be able to bring in around at least 1% per month imho..

For details on the idea catch me ingame..

Bumping for interest


Also really liking this thread and what the OP is saying. I have no idea what the theoretical limit is but at some point 1% will be unsustainable.


Lots of very wise comments and some that are missing the bigger picture

We propoased that several years ago. If interested please invest in BSAMR.
http://sites.google.com/site/evebsac/investor-relations/investing/BSAMRProspectusRev3.pdf

There are far too many characters that sell for less than they should literally because they're marketed poorly, and beyond that far too many that would fetch a premium for training time, enough to cover buying it, plexing it for a month, and transferring it. A savvy character trader could leverage this, although I don't know that it could be large enough to meet your little thought experiment's requirements on its own.


If someone has the means & motivation to pull this off on their own why would they want to invest in you doing it instead?

1% growth in nominal isk value a month would almost certainly insure that your fortune decreased in relative value.... 12% might come close , but would still fall short.

Even if tritanium didn't budge over 5 years, average ISK earning per hour of PVE almost certainly must rise more quickly than 12% a year to keep players interested in a game.

Thats a META thing regarding game design and game player pschology.

EVEN if you an your friends dodn't feel that way, even if 70% of people didnt' feel that way... the risk of losing 30% of players that they might otherwise retain by not giving a sense of Role play "progress" is too large a potential financial blow for a game company.

I'd guess a figure of 15% (the 3% compound difference wouldn't have a very quick hafl life of value) to 20% (an 8% compounded shortfall would at least be noticeable after a few years) is necessary to make PVE players feel like their ships are new and shiny and that new opportunities at least a bit better than the old opportunities, lie around the corner.


Whether or not if fits the paramaters of your challenge, the notion of retaining purchasing power relative to average hourly earnings of players is why keeping your inventory in PLEX or characters is likely the lowest long term risk of capital that cannot be deployed activiely.

Of all the ideas though, the idea of making very large returns on 100 billion seems the most plausible way to earn enough on average.

Only an EXTREMELY raw back-of-envelope one.
Say around 1 week of total Jita mineral trade for a reasonable minimum, 3 weeks for the sweet spot, 12 weeks for not much additional benefit past that.

weekly raw approx volumes
tri 7*30b*6.2 ~= 1.3 t
pye 7*6b*7.1 ~= 0.3 t
mex 7*2b*56 ~= 0.8 t
iso 7*0.5b*97~= 0.3 t
noc 7*0.15b*1k ~= 0.1 t
zyd 7*0.05b*1.7k ~= 0.6 t
meg 7*0.02b*3.6k ~= 0.5 t
TOTAL ~= 4 trillion ISK

So, about 3-5 tril minimum, best around 10-15 tril, not much point past 45-55 tril.
And I'm not sure whether you can go past 1% monthly average beyond the sweet spot after accounting for the losses you have to eat up in the "forcing" periods and all the inventory that has to stay put for a while, unavoidably.
Plus, it's a bit risky (you can easily end up losing ISK instead of gaining if others respond faster than you can push things) and certainly quite a chunk of work.

Being one member of the three man corp comprised by RAW23, Varo Jan and myself, I can confirm the 100% ROI on 100 billion per month plan described by RAW earlier. It's a monster of a business plan and the three of us worked hard into making it a model of manufacturing efficiency. RAW had put a lot of thought into that plan and has a solid foundation. I can also see that this plan can scale down logistically from a three man operation to a one man operation while retaining high returns quite easily.

That being said, I would propose a multiple path approach to this challenge as outlined below involving margin trading and manufacturing that would generate 120+ billion per month on approximately 200 billion capital.

The key in this, as in many posts before, is efficiency. The marriage between manufacturing and margin trading works well together as certain tasks are integral for both and the remaining tasks offers diversification, making the plan less tedious to reach its goal. The plan would optimally use three accounts with 6 characters in the corp, two of the characters can be vanilla and skilled up quickly, one character needing high Jita trading skills and the remaining characters being skilled manufacturers and transporters.

Part 1: Margin trading in three stations with specific items using specific strategies and a system centered on efficiency. It is the strategies employed and the efficiency of the system that makes this possible as profitable items in the market are finite and can be deduced with a some effort by skilled traders. Time involved is 3.5 hours per day with a couple targeted and specific times involved. Investment of 100 billion which will generate 70 billion per month with one member in each of the three stations. This part can scale up to 100 billion per month with 6 hours per day. This system has a track record with over 300+ days of use with profits in the 2.2b per day range the last 30 days.

Part 2: Manufacturing. Plan has already been outlined by RAW so I won’t go into too much additional detail. With three characters dedicated to a specific tasks, returns will bring 50 billion per month with 100 billion in capital. The three characters of the corp will build and haul goods to market for the traders to sell using 3 hours per day plus an additional 0.5 hours for trader involvement. As the traders are already geared up for sales, this is more of an addendum to their task rather than a separate one. This part can scale up to 100 billion per month with 7 hours per day. This system has a track record with over 150+ days both in solo and multiple player use.

The beauty of this plan is in its flexibility in reacting to the fluctuations of the market, especially for patch speculation and targeted sales. On a more day to day or week to week basis, this plan can be flexible according to the desires of the proprietor to ease the burden of repetitiveness. Manufacturing can be scaled down with trading scaled up while maintaining profit margins and vice versa, with approximately 24 hours lead time. This is a small change in repetitiveness to be sure but can mean the difference in maintaining the integrity of the business over the long term. The flexibility can also mean that if you have the time, energy and desire to grind for a day, a week or a month, profits can be astronomical and conversely, the plan can be scaled down to near zero time without losing future profit potential. As the plan stands here it will generate 120 billion per month needing 7 hours per day involvement or up to 200 billion per month needing 13 hours per day (13 hours is indeed a ridiculous amount of time but is included for scale) and on the low time end 2.5 hours per day would yield 50 billion. One positive to the time needed is most of it can be spread out throughout the day negating the need for one long marathon sitting in front of a monitor.

This plan has been fully implemented and is currently running at an average of 4 hours per day (spread out throughout the day). Additional tactics have been implemented that take advantage of market situations, caused both naturally and player driven, that boost profits on the manufacturing side with minimal additional time needed. Although this plan has only been in effect for approximately one week and is only 60% funded at the moment, profits are close to the 3 billion per day mark. Projected profits are conservatively estimated at 3.5 billion per day at 4 hours per day once fully funded and logistics refined

2.5 hours per day yields 50 billion per month profit (667m/hour)
4 hours per day yields 100 billion per month profit (833m/hour)
7 hours per day yields 120 billion per month profit (571m/hour)
13 hours per day yields 200 billion per month profit (512m/hour)

Regards
- Rykker

@Rykker Bow

Thank you very much for the extra details, and amounts of, specifically with regards to actual time involved vs profit/capital

Exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to see in this thread.


@Abditus Cularius

Agreed, it definitely has a ceiling.

So does anything in EVE.

The question is just if it's high enough or not