Market Discussions

maybe their goal is not profits but tears?

and they're winning THAT battle lol

I have hundreds of orders. Every morning I get an email that tells me which items I need to modify (usually half a dozen or so) so I log in and set the price to whatever my predefined profit value for that particular item is.

I rarely pay attention to what you are doing. Time is more valuable than ISK.

If it annoys you, please leave that item to me. I'll take care of it while you're gone. Point being, people play differently.

I WILL destroy the profits on the market if it means I can drive other traders out.
I will run buy orders up so high that your wallet will be stretched to the brink and drive sell orders so low that you'll be mortified at the prospect of ever getting involved with that item in that region again.

I will do this again & again & again & again & again until I have trampled my competitors into the dirt.
If you're going to compete with me you'd better have stamina and determination and if you're going to use a bot you had damned well better know how to USE it because I WILL find the holes.

Taking losses in the short term is a long term investment.

A successful strategy is to put pressure on an oversupplied item to drive volatility. The traders who are squeezing you probably are better capitalised than you are (since you only make 2bil a month) and can well afford to push you out. For the last two days I've had a monopoly on a very profitable item which was 2/3 of my total profit yesterday and 1/2 of the day before. It's not a high volume item but because the strategy works over and again over the past year it's been my most profitable. Hard to argue with what works.

It's called Market PVP ... oh! Didn't you knew it existed? :)

I like that advice.

If there is room to "strong arm" it means that margins are large, which means the market is not operating efficiently. I like big margins as much as the next guy, but if your trading strategy depends on them, you will always be vulnerable to market PVP.

But let's say OP's point is valid. What AM I supposed to do if I want to trade an item? Get in the .01 queue and be happy with being king of the hill for 20 seconds? Not the way I like to spend my evenings.

I am not experienced enough to be handing out trading advice, but I would point out that not every order in the system is placed by a station trader. Sometimes a player needs an item and doesn't like the price, or needs to unload an item and doesn't like the offer. They may see the large spread and put in an order midway between bid and ask. Perfectly reasonable, in my opinion. What is not reasonable is the reaction by the "professional" station traders who then try to compete with the order rather than giving the guy a quick fill and sending him on his way. When a qty 100 order moves 5-10% because of a single qty 1 order, somebody didn't do their math homework.

Someone keeps undercutting my orders by 0.01isk... luckily I produce the stuff at half the current price in Jita... I suspect the undercutters are the ones whose buy orders I recently sold to. Enjoy 2mil undercuts till we get below the price you got it from buy orders at.

I fell for this logical fallacy for a while until I figured out the 23/7 traders were posting onesy-twosies to pose as 'innocent' trades, which would immediately get relisted as sold. Over time I've found the stack size matters far less than the fundamental metrics of the item, and even if a truly innocent item gets posted, it doesn't change my overriding strategy of squeezing items in measured amounts until the active competition blinks, after which I'm in position with my backup stacks to profit from the rebound.

There are many games within games, and it's even likely I'm playing into someone's game that I can't see because I'm content with my financial performance. I've always been a big fan of spy vs. spy, and game theory scenarios where you lose if you win, and you win if you lose. Delicious fun overall.

Hello,

in a PvP game, do you understand that you have just written your own killmail for those other traders to enjoy and laugh at you off?

Also, I hope you are not around when I sell my stock. It happens few times a year, but when it happens you are going to gnash your teeth for a month. I can't care the less if I just brought your stock down by 20% for 1 month, I bought it 4 months before when it costed 1200 and now it's worth 2000 => sell => profit => ethernal, harsh law of the markets.