These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Market Discussions

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

"Seeded" buy and sell orders?
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Kate Stenton
Foundation Enterprises
#1 - 2012-07-02 18:45:04 UTC
Hi, I'm new to EVE and I also have a very poor grasp on marketing in general, so please bear with me.

I was doing some missions and I noticed under the Sisters of Eve corporation info there was a "market activity" tab. Here it said there was a demand for a drug called Vitoc and Oxygen(!). I had found some Vitoc during another mission so I looked at the market prices and the Sisters of Eve corporation had some buy orders for 1250 units.

There were also a few corporations that had sell orders for Vitoc nearby. All the orders were for 1250 units and when I bought one as a test, it immediately reset the order to 1250 units, so that's how I figured it was an NPC-seeded order.

I got excited and fit out my Atron with a cloak since all these stations were in low-sec. I filled up my frigate with Vitoc and sold it 2 jumps away for almost 1 million ISK profit! Thinking bigger, I got another frigate with a bigger cargo hold and did 2 more runs and this is where it gets interesting.

I expected the buy orders to cost more and the sell orders to pay less as I did this, but they adjusted the other way! The first unit I bought at 8,654.11 ISK and the next units were 8,540.37 ISK, meanwhile the buy orders increased by 1-100 ISK. You can see where this is going, so fast-forward to after I bought an Iteron and went to fill it up.

I was afraid if I bought it all then it wouldn't reseed, so I bought 1000 units and then another 1000 units. The market lagged for a bit and then Vitoc was suddenly for sale at over 10,000 ISK. I'm thinking at this point, after 1250 units are bought something recalculates the value (probably to prevent players from taking advantage of this).

Anyway I bought 4000 units for cheap from nearby systems and then flew around and sold them to different stations, since after I sold 2000 units the buy prices dropped very low. I went to check my blinking wallet and found it had taken me over an hour just to make 15 million ISK!

I was a bit disappointed, but now I'm really curious as to how these NPC seeded buy and sell orders are managed. Does anyone know and wish to share?

Thanks!
Mme Pinkerton
#2 - 2012-07-02 19:36:19 UTC  |  Edited by: Mme Pinkerton
These items are usually referred to as "npc trade goods", the market resources page links a few threads on them and you should be able to find plenty more via google.

NPC trade goods used to be the typical starting point for new traders several years back but are nowadays commonly overlooked.
I dimly recall a story of somebody making a lot of money from trading them last year or so... will see if I can dig up that thread (edit: can't find it, maybe my recollection is wrong).

I never traded in them so I don't have any additional experience to share - but I really like the approach/way of thinking you describe in your post! Big smile

An IPO guide (David H'Levi) | Towards a Positive Argument For Investing (RAW23) | Freighter Operations 101 (Kazuo Ishiguro) | Dominion market analysis (Akita T)
Aryth
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#3 - 2012-07-02 20:25:42 UTC
Kate Stenton wrote:
Hi, I'm new to EVE and I also have a very poor grasp on marketing in general, so please bear with me.

I was doing some missions and I noticed under the Sisters of Eve corporation info there was a "market activity" tab. Here it said there was a demand for a drug called Vitoc and Oxygen(!). I had found some Vitoc during another mission so I looked at the market prices and the Sisters of Eve corporation had some buy orders for 1250 units.

There were also a few corporations that had sell orders for Vitoc nearby. All the orders were for 1250 units and when I bought one as a test, it immediately reset the order to 1250 units, so that's how I figured it was an NPC-seeded order.

I got excited and fit out my Atron with a cloak since all these stations were in low-sec. I filled up my frigate with Vitoc and sold it 2 jumps away for almost 1 million ISK profit! Thinking bigger, I got another frigate with a bigger cargo hold and did 2 more runs and this is where it gets interesting.

I expected the buy orders to cost more and the sell orders to pay less as I did this, but they adjusted the other way! The first unit I bought at 8,654.11 ISK and the next units were 8,540.37 ISK, meanwhile the buy orders increased by 1-100 ISK. You can see where this is going, so fast-forward to after I bought an Iteron and went to fill it up.

I was afraid if I bought it all then it wouldn't reseed, so I bought 1000 units and then another 1000 units. The market lagged for a bit and then Vitoc was suddenly for sale at over 10,000 ISK. I'm thinking at this point, after 1250 units are bought something recalculates the value (probably to prevent players from taking advantage of this).

Anyway I bought 4000 units for cheap from nearby systems and then flew around and sold them to different stations, since after I sold 2000 units the buy prices dropped very low. I went to check my blinking wallet and found it had taken me over an hour just to make 15 million ISK!

I was a bit disappointed, but now I'm really curious as to how these NPC seeded buy and sell orders are managed. Does anyone know and wish to share?

Thanks!


The much simpler way to find an NPC order is just to look for all orders of 365 days duration. Those are NPC orders.

Leader of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal.

Creator of Burn Jita

Vile Rat: You're the greatest sociopath that has ever played eve.
Caerfinon
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#4 - 2012-07-02 22:30:09 UTC
The NPC orders always have the same volume and an expirey date of 365 days.

When you buy from an NPC order thier sell price is adjusted upwards. The next buy can cause it to go higher. After a preiod of no buys and server down times the price starts decreasing.

When selling to an NPC the opposite is true. each sell can lower the price the NPC is willing to pay for goods. Likewise after a period of no selling to the NPC and server downtime the NPC starts raising thier bid price again.

If you watch the various trade goods orders you can figure out which system NPC is producing a good and which in consuming it. Match them up. wait until price gap is large and profit.

Lo-sec stations always sell lower and buy higher then hi-sec stations. More risk, but more profit.

One strategy is to purchase goods and then haul to system of known NPC consumer and then put a sell order above what the the NPC is willing to pay for it, but within the range that you have observed the item selling for. Eventually the NPC will raise thier price to hit your sell order.

I started out trading in tobacco, spirits, and holoreels... made quite a bit.

If you are succesful you can rasie enough capital to start trading seriously in player made goods.

Cheers C.

@Caerfinon - Twitter
Dealth Striker
Perkone
Caldari State
#5 - 2012-07-03 02:22:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Dealth Striker
I have made a few billion isk doing NPC trading over a couple of years. It is so tight margin now that I have moved on from it. Like the poster above mentioned, it is a good way to get some capital to do other things.


I will not give away the secret about how to manipulate the NPC buy and sell orders - I will give you a hint though - try selling/ buying different amounts and see how the NPC price works - it should not take long to figure out what is going on. This will also help you figure out what your competition can do to you as well. Plus, once you figure it out, it can be applied to all NPC buy/sell items.



The hi sec NPC items works the same way as the low sec. The reason that the low sec is usually higher or lower than it's counterpart in hi sec is ... you can be blown up in low sec and alot of people who do NPC trading will not go into low sec given what can and usually happens.

If you are going to continue with low sec NPC trading (I would recommend you do) I would do the following:

1: look at manually doing the buy and selling to start to see if you have competition

2: monitor the prices to see if someone is working off the item as well (easy to check player buy and sell orders - those are less than 90 days).

3: after you figured that you do not have competition, look at your own buy and sell orders so you can do the smaller volume NPC trades. That way you can leave them alone for a few cycles and concentrate on other regions.

4: if you have found competition and want you get rid of them, then play the manual game and buy and sell just below them or above them. You take less profit but you can screw them up. Do this without buy and sell orders so your competition does not find out who you are and tag you in their addressbook so they can see when u are on or off.

5: if you are going to frequent the same stations in low sec, I would look at creating out of station straight warp out bookmarks. There alot of people who will camp stations (particularly the ones which cause a long delay to warp away from on undocking). I would get in my co-ops ship, undock and fly straight for 200km+ and then create a bm for that station. That way, if it is being camped when I undock, I can quick warp to the bm before they can lock on to me. Then from there, I can warp jump the system. This can be done in a shuttle too as u can quick warp if you have too when trying to create the station quick warp bm.



I wish you success and one passing note, if you are doing low sec trading, insure your ship cuz it is not if you do get tagged, it is more when you get tagged. :)
Striker Out!!
Kate Stenton
Foundation Enterprises
#6 - 2012-07-03 04:08:58 UTC
Thank you all for the help, I learned a lot :)

Caerfinon wrote:
One strategy is to purchase goods and then haul to system of known NPC consumer and then put a sell order above what the the NPC is willing to pay for it, but within the range that you have observed the item selling for. Eventually the NPC will raise thier price to hit your sell order.

Oh that's clever! I think it would probably work best if I made several smaller sell orders so that I could modify the prices from far away to prevent a large drop in prices by selling too many at once.

Dealth Striker wrote:
3: after you figured that you do not have competition, look at your own buy and sell orders so you can do the smaller volume NPC trades. That way you can leave them alone for a few cycles and concentrate on other regions.

Provided nobody else stumbles upon the item I'm trading, I could essentially control the buy and sell prices through small purchases and pauses in activity?

I guess it will never be "stockpile and sell it all" but more of a trickle income. What I need to do now is see if these prices are adjusted at a station, system or region-wide level and if they take the average market price into consideration.

Since it appeared a large recalculation was done after the initial sell order was filled, what if I made many of my own sell orders in the same station at absurdly high prices. I wonder if it would cause the NPC sellers to adjust their prices the other way.

More testing is needed, FOR SCIENCE!
Redslay
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#7 - 2012-07-04 16:27:15 UTC
Dealth Striker wrote:
... you can be blown up in low sec and alot of people who do NPC trading will not go into low sec given what can and usually happens.


If you don't want to be sploded then don't undock. No where is safe.

If you want profit; find the risk.
Pinstar Colton
Sweet Asteroid Acres
#8 - 2012-07-05 19:11:56 UTC
Not every low sec system is a perma-camped sensor-boosted instalocking meatgrinder (complete with pod vaporizing battleship smartbomb disco lights).

However, the most commonly camped low sec systems are the ones that are on chokepoints...which happen to also be the ones most high-sec players wander into when they feel the urge to try low sec. This often chases them right back to high sec with the mistaken impression that every single low sec system is like that.

Finding an off-the-beaten-path low/high border system is key. There is isk to be made from low sec...though I've never tried NPC goods. Use the statistics to find where lots of ship/pod killing is going on and avoid those.

In the cat-and-mouse game that is low sec, there is no shame in learning to be a better mouse.