EVE New Citizens Q&A

To my understanding, it could be as simple as buying an item low at one trade station (for example at Rens trade hub in Minmatar, or any other station) , and taking the effort to resell at major trade hubs like in Jita where prices are higher as more buyers congregate there.

Websites like Eve Central can be an useful tool for you.

This is regional trading, not station trading.

Not quite as you say.


As an example:


Lowest current sell order is at 5.000.000 ISK. People will buy from this order, cause who will pay more for it.
Highest current buy order is at 2.000.000 ISK. People will sell to that order, cause who will take less money for their item.


Now, as a trader, you want to start buying up that item for say: 2.100.000 ISK and resell it in station for 4.900.000 ISK.
So, basically, you want to jump into the gap that is between best buy and best sell order, but be aware that margins can be small and also take a lot of other things other then raw ISK into consideration.

For instance, the amount of items traded. Sure, there can be a 50 million margin between sell and buy orders of an item, but if that thing is only bought and sold every 2 or 3 months, not the best investment over something with less margin but high item flow (the quicker you flip something, the faster you get your money + profit back).


Of course, the more traders in station and the bigger the market, the closer the margins are.




Another nice option is speculation trading. So by taking advantages of rumours and proposed changes you can actually play the market very well.

A nice personal example, when they changed the Interceptors to become immune to interdiction bubbles, me (and a lot of other traders) saw that this would be a great chance to make some ISK, as every null-sec player and their mom and dog would want one to get in and out of null-sec easily. So, before the changes, people started buying up Interceptors (and manufacturers started pumping them out of their factories a lot) to relist them after the change for a nice mark up and cash in on the change.

The same can be done for instance if you want to be moving trader is by following the news and meta of EVE. If you know where a big war is and where one (or both - which means more customers) are buying up their resupply stuff, jump into that market.

But this is what i don't understand.

How can i buy the item for 2100 if the lowest sell order is 5000?

Where am i getting the item for 2100?

If i have to travel to another station to get it, that's not station trading, right?

Thsnks.

It's not "where", it's "when."

If you're station trading, you're buying items in the station, holding them for a while, and then selling them out when the price increases to make you a profit. Taxes and broker fees can take out quite a chunk, so you have to be careful to calculate these into your pricing points.

Basically, it's speculation:

- CCP announces some discounts on PLEX -> some people buy PLEX and try to sell them for ISK -> extra supply -> price decreases. You buy some PLEXes, and hold onto them until, say, January or February, when all discounts are likely to expire.

- Big war starts out in 0.0 because someone insulted someone else's parent. They're fighting, they're going to need ships and modules, and they don't have much time to mine and manufacture, because it's all out daily war. Mineral prices go up, ship prices go up, etc. If you somehow find out about the war ahead of time... you could stockpile minerals now, and sell them once the war is in full swing.

- CCP gives everyone fireworks for Christmas. Some people have some fun, but the majority don't care and would rather sell the "junk." You buy them cheap, and come summer, sell them out on May 5, July 4, or other national holidays where people may feel inclined to shoot virtual fireworks to celebrate.

Some items have slight up and down variations every day. There's more demand for ships on Sunday than on Wednesday, for example, because of all the weekend warriors. Others usually vary when something big happens in the game (major war, tournament, nerf, etc.).

EDIT: Pick an item in the market and switch it to the "History" tab. You'll see it's set up to help you out, by giving running averages, Donchian channel, daily volume traded, etc. So you can figure out trends, and whether something sells a lot or very little. Then you start guessing what's going to happen in the future. If you wan to do educated guesses, subscribe to all the EVE news websites, keep tabs on what the major alliances are doing, and read the devblogs and the Upcoming Changes forum to see what changes CCP may be making.

EDIT2: And yes. The item is being sold for 5000, but you can set up a buy order at that station that says "I want to buy this for 2100." Someone who's got a ton of those things may sell to you. Then you turn around and say "I want to sell this item for 7000." Your item will be listed at 7000; the guy who's selling for 5000 will sell it first, then as all the cheap sales are filled out, eventually it'll be your turn. You can specify your prices by clicking the Advanced button on the sale window, and if you speculate right, the orders will sit there for a while but then go through as the average market prices catch up with your pricing.

Now i see. Thanks for explaining.

I found this guide useful when starting out. Particularly this explanation.


There are wide-ranging opinions on this. Certainly, if you have the time (and willpower) to 0.01 ISK you will get your profits faster than others. Which means you can reinvest them quicker and make more money of that money. However, it's hard to maintain and easy to burn out. This is basically low-margin, high volume trading.*

Many of the most successful traders prefer to ride the larger "swells" as the market ebbs and flows. Placing below-average buy orders and above-average sell orders and waiting for the market to hit those levels, even if it takes weeks or months. Speculation on price changes (due to patches, politics/doctrine changes, meta shifts etc.) is often wrapped up in this process. It's slower so it's not as easy to do with small amounts of capital to invest, because you get bored of waiting. This is high-margin, low volume trading.*

Personally, I do some of each. I'm probably more successful at the first style - it's easier. When you start to have large amounts of capital you can't figure out how to invest, or want to get involved in speculation or market manipulation, the second becomes more attractive.


*a slight oversimplification, as there are also items you can 0.01 with large margins and low volume because of rarity or lack of demand which I would also refer to as low-volume, high-margin.

This is a game do what you enjoy.

Years ago when I used to play WoW there were people that I knew in game that would play the auction house for hours and hours every day. They would max out the amount of in-game currency that they could hold on their account and have to spend large amounts on silly things or just let the gold waste as it went into their already full wallets. This was back before WoW had a PLEX equivalent and back when you had to get most of your gear through drops so the gold could not even do all that much for you. They would make the money for the sake of making it.

If you are that kind of person that gets your kicks off of sitting in Jita 0.01ing all day then by all means do it. However if that feels like work to you then I recommend that you work and hour of overtime at your real life job and buy a PLEX and sell it for a quick 1.2 Billion as it will be less work for you.

Easy answer as Im on my phone so wall of text typing is a PITA;


It depends.


Where are you? What are you trading? How are the margins? How high is trade volume? How fast do items flip over?

I agree with J'Poll on this. It seems that it is not station trading that you don't understand but Eve market basics. Read up on the market and how buy and sell orders work then the station trading should make sense without further research.