EVE New Citizens Q&A

You are getting mixed up with a general concept and the Eve Marketing mechanics.

The term buy low, sell high is a term that came from the real world stock markets and refers to buying stock when it is cheap and selling it when it is more expensive. Everyone quotes this and nearly everyone does the exact opposite, buying when a stock is hot and selling it when it is crashing. The term has now moved to general usage for all sorts of trading and is in use with normal Eve trading. It this case, it could mean buy the stock in a location where it is cheap and moving it to where it is more expensive. There are tools and sites that you can go to get the prices in various markets within Eve, google is your friend. Or you can use a price checking Alt permanently located in a distant market hub from where your main lives.

Buy and sell order are the mechanics of the Eve marketing system and can grant you enormous flexibility in managing orders as well as allowing you to buy low and immediately sell high(er) in one particular station.

You should be familiar with buying and selling direct. To buy something you simply right click on an order line in the top half of the marketing screen, select buy, enter the quantity and click ok. Assuming you are in the same station or have the trading skills to buy remotely, the money is deducted from your wallet and the item appears in the hanger in the station where the order was set up. To sell you simply right click on an item in your hanger, click sell enter the quantity and the item disappears from your station hanger and money is deposited into your wallet. Again there are trading skills to do this remotely from a different station, but in this case the goods you were selling have to be physical delivered to the station you are selling them from in advance of you carrying out this transaction.

Those order lines are actually Buy and Sell orders, usually created by other players, but some are NPC created. The orders at the top that you buy from are called Sell Orders, the orders at the bottom that you sell to are called Buy Orders. That might seem confusing, but they are named in relation to the person who set them up:- You Buy from someone else's Sell Order, you Sell to someone else's Buy Order.

Now lets say you want to buy something in a particular place but there are no suitable Sell Orders available. Either because there are none in the station or they are too expensive. Then you set up a Buy Order, by clicking on the button at the bottom of the market screen for the item in question "Create Buy Order". It will open with a default quantity of one and the price set to the cheapest available sell order in station if one exists. If you click Ok at that point, you will immediately buy the goods as if you had clicked on the sell order direct. Change the quantity as necessary, reduce the price to the figure you want and create a buy order. Then you have to wait until someone comes along, hauls the goods in and sells to your Buy order. It might be seconds, it might never happen. It depends on the price you offer in relation to the going rate and the competition from other buy orders. Note the game automatically forces sellers to sell to the best buy order and vice versa. However, note that although you always satisfy the best order, if you try to satisfy the wrong order, you only get the price of the order you attempted to satisfy. Eg. Two sell orders for X, one at 10 Isk, one at 2 Isk, you attempt to buy the 10 Isk one and pay 10 Isk, but get the product from the 2 Isk seller. This mechanic is used in many scams. You will often see a series of ridiculously overpriced Sell Orders, these are to catch the people who sorted the order the wrong way (highest price first). It costs a lot in brokers fees to set those orders up, but it only has to be done once because they will never be fulfilled even if clicked on. Obviously the same Seller also has the low Sell Orders as well.

This brings us to the 'Isk game'. Other people with Buy Orders for the same product in the same station will see your Buy Order, which presumeably you will have set to a price better than theirs. They can then modify their price to get above yours. You have a few choices, continually modify your order to keep on top, wait until their order has been completed, or modify your order to a figure that satisfies the best sell order in the station and turn it into a direct buy.

Sell orders can be set up the same way. Move the goods to the staion, right click on them, select sell, the price of the best buy order comes up. Modify that price to one you want and click Ok, a sell order is created and you wait until something decides to buy it.

Player created Buy and Sell orders can exist for a maximum of 90 days before being cancelled if they are not satisfied in that time. Although every time you modify an order the count down timer is reset. So technically as long as you modify it once every 90 days you can keep an order alive permanently.

You will notice that Buy Orders (at the bottom) are always cheaper than Sell Orders (at the top), at least in the same station. It is impossible for a Buy Order to reach the same or higher price than a Sell Order - it would simply satisfy the sell order if you attempted it. Some items for example Battleships have big differences between their Buy and Sell orders and it is possible to set up a Buy order for say 100M and then as soon as you get it, push it back out on a Sell order for 120M. Too good to be true? It is. Where this is possible (Jita), there are a gadzillion people there trying to do just that. But money can be made if you are patient and have the dedication to play the Isk game continuously.

This renews my faith in our players trying to help :)
A nice well thought out explanation for a new player.

Thank you sir!

I now hate you.

LOL

Look how small his feet are! I feel sorry for him.

I love the internet.

Dont forget to check market history on the item, and check its movement. Dont want to trade something that isn't moving.

Thank you for restoring my faith in humanity.


For the OP, theres several different kinds of trading in eve, and a few ways of getting your product to the buyers.


With no skills in the [Trade] skillgroup you can have 5 maximum orders, either for buying or selling.
Trade skills either increase the number of orders you can have active at any time, modify the scope of your orders or reduce the costs involved in setting up those otders.
A basic 'buy order' has a range of 'station', this means that only people selling that item at that station will complete your order. Trade skills can modify the scope of this base order from system-wide through to region.

Volume Skills
- Trade
- Retail
- Wholesale
- Tycoon

Scope Skills
- Daytrading
- Market Trading
- Marketting
- Procurement
- Visability

Cost Skills
- Accounting
- Broker Relations

You can look up these skills, and read thier descriptions, on your character sheet by selecting 'show all skills' on the settings bit.



Buying low and Selling high from the same station, without any hauling at all, relies totally on the laziness of the eve player base [n.b. not all eve players are lazy, but enough are to make money from them].
Lazy players don't like dragging 'stuff' around to get the best price for it, so they will sell it locally at a lower, but still reasonable, price.
In the same way, the lazy player wont fly 7 jumps to buy the cheapest item, but will instead buy it locally at higher, but still reasonable, price. Determine those 'reasonable prices' and you have become a succesful trader.

Watching the prices of 'items of interest' in 2+ regions over time allows you to judge when its good to buy cheaply, and then haul it to a different location to resell at a higher price. If you dont want to or cant haul it yourself, contract it out to a courier but remember to set the 'collateral' properly.



Thats just 2 methods, and there are others methods mentioned here and in in the market subforum,