Market Discussions

While most posts like this are asking obvious or noobish questions about trading, I am hoping for a little more with this post. I would first like to describe my situation and then ask for some helping improving my trading game.

I started trading about 5 and a half months ago. When I started I gave my trading character 400 mil ISK and let him station trade in Dodixie. After I hit about a bil I noticed the volume was low so I moved to Rens. Rode that wave until about 3 bil and then decided to give Jita a try. My play style doesn't work for Jita because I haven't figured out swing trading/buy, hold and sell at a higher price trading just yet. After basically breaking even in Jita for a month I moved to Amarr and made a killing on the recent run up in ice prices.

Recently, I left Amarr and returned to Rens and I have seen that a larger trading account does indeed make trading easier. I have found a few opportunities where I have been able to buy all of an item and bump the price to make a decent profit (this is difficult because I don't have enough isk to make me feel comfortable doing this unless what I am buying to make the change in price is around a bil or less).

All of the above being said I have traded 400 mil into 7 bil over the past 6 months. Try as I might I can't seem to break the 50-60 million isk per day profit level. Currently I am trading with Accounting 4, Broker Relations 4, Margin Trading 3, and only 45 orders.

Should I be shooting for more order? Trading in more than one hub? Buying in one region and moving it to another region to maximize profit? Any suggestions you have would be greatly appreciated.

I am obviously not asking for items to trade or anything like that so I hope that this post doesn't get trolled too hard. Just looking for suggestions on how to step it up and move to the next level. I have been pretty pleased with my move from 400 mil to 7 bil in a shade over 5 months, but constructive criticism is welcome as well.

Hoping for a lively discussion...

Thanks for the response. That is what I am figuring I need to do. Currently I only trade 20-30 different types of goods depending on the location and market action. More goods means a better chance of getting a fill on your order I suppose...

Guess I will have to start training the ol' trading alt again.

Some items with high volume and throughput (>1 bil a day works fine) with margins of 5% or higher grant a nice income. T2 ammunition and implants work best. Profits of 10 - 50 million per item are possible in Jita. Other trading hubs grant higher margins but volume traded is much lower.

So my guess is, you have to decide between a relaxed trading style (low volume higehr margins) or a more aggressive one in Jita (high volume but low margin).

Try to skill Accounting lvl 5 to minimize broker fee. The lower your margins, the higher your loss in taxes and fees.

Lauren,

Thanks for the post. Actually this is the type of constructive criticism I was talking about in the original post. While it is true that I lucked into it a bit. i was trading it because of its wide margins and made a fair bit during the run up.

Also, thanks for the suggestions of new items to look into. Now that I have more cash I would be able to play there and I am sure that their price point keeps quite a few traders out of there.

Thanks again for all the comments folks, the above has been helpful.

When you diversify, pick items that work in synergy with each other.

Invuln 2s, Photon 2s, deflector 2s, LSE 2s.
800mm auto 2s, gyros, tech 2 ammo.

Allows for slightly higher prices, by cutting down on travel time. The lower margin goods act to bring people in, where they then buy the higher margin goods.

One more thing.

If you have the patience and time I wouldn't start a new trading char just yet, rather I would continue on the one I already have, as a trading char he isnt that well trained and I think you will earn more in getting the support skills up real good on one char and have more orders on the same char rather then have a couple or more lousy chars doing the same thing.
Also consider that you have to logg in and out every time you need to change order. That could get boring!

I don't know if trading can be measured in isk per hour, I think the best would be how much for what effort or investment.

I was thinking of trading in everything that spawns in missions but the number of items is in the hundreds.. too much work. I stick with commodities.

If you got some spare isk what you could do is use the other hubs as you mentioned to sell stuff that is not that high in sales volume with an alt wich does not need much training.I did it for some time a few months back with posstuff for example towers / labs etc and with implants.The used alts did not have any or much training but it was a way for me to keep unused isk making profits while not having to maintain too much work at updating the prices.Crystal implants where my favourite in this one .


The amount of profit was not huge but it did give me something extra to play with and also didn't give more 'workload' then i wanted as i was a damn lazy trader.The times you feel like doing a little more work you can check that hub to see if there are other things to trade in and do an occasional haul up and down the pipe for quick sales.

Mind you this should only be done with 'spare isk' as these are not high volume items.I had days where i had to restock allmost all my items and days where i did not sell one item.

In my case i only have a handfull of things i still sell just to keep the plex coming in , these are high value items so do not need updating and IF i update them it takes 2 minutes.Over the last week i had a day with a 2.7 B profit at best and a 250 mille at worst so as it fluctuates so much it is hard to give it an isk/hour rating but these items need max 1 to 2 hours work on a weekly base so time/profit is decent enough for my liking , just checked and today i am around 900 mille profits.

I traded actively till last month for about 3 months in a row but there also took high value items as such easy to track profits etc.IF you own a corp then it is allways easy to track profits you do , just use the corp wallet X for trade , then add what's left with what you have in sell/buy orders et voila.

Back in the days when i did 500+orders regional i updated once a day and also traded from my own corp with only my chars in it as such it was easy to keep up with the average monthly profits made , however daily profits was undoable and offcourse i had a load of **** around different regions wich i did not account into the profits untill i decided to call it a day and clean it all up.Was a surprising high amount of isk laying around i might add .They where reproc items though so i knew i would allways make a profit on it as the margin for items was between 30 to 80 % profits.