Market Discussions

Hey guys, slightly odd post but I just wanted to draw on the collective wisdom of the MD forum to try and put things into perspective.

Basically the question I've come with is, what should a new start trader be able to realistically expect to make in returns from station trading, given reasonable skills/standings/capital?

In my own case I've been trading in Jita for about a week now, started with 1.3b and on around 1.57b now, so I've made about 20% on my original investment.

Am I wrong to be slightly underwhelmed by making 270mil in a week or am I perhaps missing a trick here and still haven't fully gotten to grips with the full potential trading has to offer?

I should add I'm not here to ask anyone to take me by the hand and coach me through different trading tactics or anything, just a yea or a nea on whether I'm likely doing the right thing so I know whether to just keep doing what I have been, or if I perhaps need to go back to the drawing board and rethink my strategy.

Its hard to scale due to how I have been doing it, but i found my price checker/buy plex alt had 2 mill on it a few weeks ago, maybe 3 weeks now. I decided as an experiment id see what I could do with that. So sparing a day of training off my combat main for that account (not this one) i have a trader toon with a whooping 17 orders and maybe 2-3 levels of broker relations to take a nip outta taxes. currently that 2 mill is approaching 7-800mill in current market order+ wallet+ assets. without ever leaving jita 4-4. I tend to take a more active approach of spreading out my orders with smaller quantities of stuff i know will move and flip fast. I also try to pick goods that are giving me a 25%+ return between the buy and the sell.

Think of the things that get lost/ dropped in the game, ie. pvp equipment, ammo. Min market i find only works if you look long run and speculate which right now ive lost alittle on.

but remember it also doesnt quite scale or stay consistent. all goods are going to peak at a point where you simply cant buy or sell more of them in a certain period of time so investing more into it is a waste. i'll make 25-50 mill buy orders that flip for 45-60 mill all day and have consistent return, if you set your volumes realistically like 25% of daily trade volume or something to that effect.

About 3 billion a month doing it casually (an hour a day) is fairly easy.

20% per week is a very nice turn around.


Personally I estimate my return at about 5% per week avarage, doesnt sound like much, but it keeps compounding.


If you overdo it, I.E. get greedy, you will see competition lose their cool one after another and you will shoot yourself and them in the foot in very short order.

Take it easy, take your cut and LET others make something to, otherwise crashing and price hikes become rampant, canceling orders and watching prices crash will only lead to less ISK in the short medium and longrun.



Iv learned this the hard way, over 2 years in 5 regions.

Oh Rykker's first slip up :)

For what it's worth: I make between 100-150m a day using 3B and 53 order slots. I update my orders 3 times during the day, so approx 45mins to an hour. Which I am happy with at the moment as I play very little and get the chance to build my isk ready for some more pew pew :)

a) Week does not equal month.

b) I think Rykker is being somewhat too modest for his own good so as not to appear like a showoff but his audits show him earning something like those returns per day. He probably just didn't want to rub our plebeian noses in it.

Edit - 70% monthly returns on 100bil for pure station trading discussed here (https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1524957#post1524957).

Yes that is true week don't equal months.. I missed that part
I almost got the feeling that you felt the need to come rushing in as a knight to protect Rykkers maidenhead, as soon as someone asked for a clarification on something odd in his post (even thou the odd thing was just a mistake from the same poster, yes me)
I am wondering do Rykker really have a maidenhead to protect, and do he need someone to protect it for him?

The second thing is, with those revenues per day. Wtf is he doing in this forum asking for money still???
Starting to sound like a rep grind to me... Or someone is exaggerating

Welcome back RAW23


Edit: Got sidetracked IRL in the middle of writing this post, so Rykker got in before me...

Not back, sadly, and probably won't be for at least another year. Just had a few minutes to come admire the forum drama about the FW exploit and thought I would drop in on MD. I have posted occasionally with other characters but I reactivated this character a couple of weeks ago as all my other accounts had run out and I needed a point of contact for some people.

First post I happened to see was one for which I was able to correct a misapprehension so I thought I would provide a valuable service to the community (ahem) and also take the opportunity to brush the dust off my white armour. In this case, I happen to know the details of Rykker's profits quite well because I have partnered up with him in the past and am somewhat in awe of his abilities (and no, astoundingly they are not exaggerated).

I also think he can sometimes be a bit too nice on the forums and that he needs to brag more!

As to his maidenhead, if he's managed to survive flakeys' predatory advances then I'm sure he can manage without my help on that front.

I like what you said about still room for improvement as I still think the same thing. I am always on the lookout for new items, ideas, tactics and strategies. There is much about the market that I don’t know, but I keep my ears open on the forums and scc-lounge for that little bit of information that will open up new doors, the proverbial light bulb if you will.

About your questions, I typically wait a couple of days at least before I remove an item that is not very profitable. An important thing to consider when canceling and taking a loss is: Can the returned isk be put to immediate and profitable use somewhere else. If yes, then cut your losses and move on if the item is a dud especially if your working capital is limited. If possible, figure out why it didn’t work and carry the knowledge on to other items. Some items rarely go to buy orders, others have extremely heavy compitition, some have large swings in their margin, etc.

With the balancing of profitable orders, stick with what you know will make a profit and slowly look for new items to trade in as your capital grows, replacing items when called for. It is great to look for new and even more profitable items but get all the profit you can from known items with the capital you are working with. Be aware of the cycles and the natural price of those items and don’t overstock what you cannot easily sell, most certainly do not keep all your eggs in one basket, stay diversified to an extent to hedge against large losses in one sector of the market.

I mentioned last year that I was in the process of writing a guide on advanced tactics for margin trading. The outline has been established a while ago and only needs content; aside from Malufenix, is there still a demand for it out there? Feel free to send me a mail or convo if you don’t want to post on the forums, just a yay (or nay) would suffice. Keep in mind that it will not be posted till after the completion of my current bond.

One last thing, any further comparisons of my e-honor to a virgins ‘honey pot’ will result in a frown face.

I started station trading during the first week of my trial. After 2 or 3 days I found the 66% off sale on Steam, bought Eve... Needless to say, 5 days later I've had enough to buy a PLEX, 3 or 4 days later enough for two PLEXes. My goal was to make enough for a PLEX in the first month of subscription that came with the game (I don't like spending money on subscriptions, I can aswell just buy singleplayer game for similar price.

My point being is the profits vary a lot depending on how much you are getting undercutted by 0,01 ISK and how fast can you react to that undercutting. If you'll check regularly and change the price every 5 minutes for 8 hours, it is doable to turn about 1000 millions in to 500 millions in a week, it is just tremendously boring and you'll suffer from burnout.

As you'll be putting up a lot of orders, get Broker relations atleast 4, Accounting atleast 4, and grind the reputation with the corporation which owns the station you intend to trade at. Otherwise, it all just depends which items you'll find and trade, it might even be good idea to throw in some inter-region trading (atleast that's what I do when I am bored of watching the market orders in my wallet.)

Charge on.