Market Discussions

I can't offer to much, but here's what little experience I've gathered. I've set my role as stationtrader for most of the time I play + plus hauling inside my own region, like say 3-5 jumps.

For merchandice, well, I won't say what I sell, of course, but browse the marketdata. The window that gives all the charts. If you find items that has consistent large green lines ( like EMP S ) and good volume you have a fast moving item. If the given item also has a difference of say 30% or more between buyorder and sellorder it is good.

I have found 5-6 items that I trade so I won't loose track of the movements. And I also try to spread the risk out between them. That 300% profit item with hefty price tag to buy might be tempting, but it would suck bigtime if I can't sell it.

There is players out there with way more experience than me, so I hope they throw in some advice as well.

As for Jita, I've stayed out of it. I guess that with my playtime, I would always loose out any bid with .01 ISK simply because I can't constantly monitor my orders. There are other hubs that are not that busy.

Hope I could offer something you did not already know

Thankyou for the replies so far.

Khall your reply was very in depth and helpful. I'm thinking that i need to spend a week or so browsing markets, identifying possible trade pipelines before i try getting stuck in again.

If anyone else has valuable information they wish to share, i would be happy to hear your advice.


Regards

Unfair Advantage.

Clamslayer,

I understand you are reluctant to share your secrets of the trade, any trader worth his/her salt wouldn't share squat. what i am asking is how you determine what would be a fast seller as im new to this. Either way i guess i still have alot to learn, some people will be willing to share some wisdom, others wont.

Regards

Unfair Advantage

Here's the thing, trading isn't something that has a lot of theory behind it. I looked for guides when I first started just like everyone else. They were more than useless, it's not really something that fits in a FAQ. You just have to get out there and try it. You're gonna lose money, and you're gonna lose money on dumb decisions and you're gonna get scammed. The only real advice I can give you is "buy low, sell high". I know that seems utterly pointless advice, but give it time. Just like I hated not having any guidance when I started after a while you'll realize that's the only way you can start. Just get out there, buy something and try to sell it.

Ok, look at what you do - what do you use what is useful, some 'Noddy' stuff .....

Main trading hub is in sytem x, there are some good lvl 4 agents in a sytem 2 jumps over......asses the types of ships and rats well ammo and drones are always used, sometimes preference for certain ships what are the load outs they might use....missioners are VERY lazy I wouldn't make one jump for stuff if I can buy it in station I am based even if 10-20% mark up, buying a couple of drones that I stupidly lost is worth paying extra than the time of down shipping jumping next door to get one slightly cheaper..

Do you have lo-sec nearby? If you have the skills and can risk it you could try stocking the local station with simple stuff.....high mark up, high profit, high risk. But gate camps and pirate ganks will love to steal your stuff!!

I started trading in things I knew from gameplay, i also changed regions and realised that certain mission items drop more in some regions than others - as such there can be a huge variance in price.....so an item I buy for 5k isk I could sell to buy orders elsewhere for 150k or just list at 300k....and this is an item that moves in high volumes. Ok quite extreme but the margins are there if you can be bothered to look.

Tbh I don't trade as much as I could/have but am very happy with my growing NAV bought myself some nice shiny ships and still have several billions in the market. I have also got my fingers burned a bit in one speculation but also made a lot of isk in another - it's high risk after all.

Initially I would suggest low cost items but with a margin you can make a reasonable profit with decent turnover and build from there - diversification is also important as trading those 2-3 items you know well is all well and good but when the nerf bat hits, you may look a bit silly suddenly selling at 200% above everyone else and your margin is destroyed.


Skill up trading skills and get high standings with the stations you want to trade from - this reduces your tax and charges increasing your profitability .....can also make some low percentage items profitable when you trade in high volume.

Also remember % increase is noce but means naff all after a while......so the item above has a huge % profit but I can sell one item for 10m profit which may only be 10% profit BUT it's a bigger boost to my wallet than flogging 30+ of the above items...as you gain more isk you'll start to drop the cheaper items as although profitability is good you can make more actual isk flipping a couple of 100m isk items than several hundred 100k isk items..

GL it's fun and doesn't have to be all consuming you can just place sensible orders in a relatively busy hub and they will fill/sell over time or you can 0.1 isk as an aggressive trader to move your stuff faster....like anything in Eve the more time you invet the more you will get out of it.


Hopefully that all makes sense just my thoughts without giving too much away but it's kind of common sense stuff but may help you on your first few days trading

I station trade in Jita as a sideline – not my main activity.

I look for items that sell for at least 1 million isk and have at least a 15% difference between their buy and sell offers. I look at the history of those buy and sell offers to see if they are relatively stable (stability is a good thing). And I also check to be sure that at least 10 of the items trade every day – the more the better. I usually put up buy orders for between 3 and 15 of the items depending on price and how confident I am of being able to buy them and then sell them.

In the morning I update all of my orders and in the evening I update them again - .01 isk better than the current buy/sell order on each item. I have about 40 orders total – usually about 25 buy orders and 15 sell orders at any given time. I don’t worry about someone beating my order by .01 isk because in the next twelve hours either mine will work its way back to the top or I’ll be updating it again to be best the following morning/evening.

The most important thing is to find items that are profitable and active - once you find them (and it might take several days to find 25 of them) you won't have to worry about the .01 wars as much.

It’s small scale, but I’ve been averaging about 40 million isk profit daily with a total investment of about 2 billion isk. I find this acceptable for the 15 minutes of work in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening. Like I said, it's a sideline - not my main activity.

Good luck!

Buy High
Sell Low
Buy more PLEX.

Understand your product!

No longer against the rules, FYI.

Also heavily saturated market, because everyone is just as clever as you are.