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From 0 ISK to 2.5B ISK in 21 days on a trial character
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Noemi Kautsuo
Space Environment Creations LLC
#1 - 2012-07-15 14:15:03 UTC
Hello there!

During the past few years I noticed quite a few of these market experiments where people would create a trial account and start trading in an effort to earn as much as possible with obvious limitations (no skills, nor ISK). I have decided to try this 'challenge' myself and see how it goes. This thread explains my results and methods I used. I don't consider myself good at trading (and I actually don't do arbitrage station trading on my main at all) - but still I think this thread might be helpful to new traders and maybe they can learn something from my mistakes and methods.

Who am I?

My 'trading' main character is Naya Sky. I don't post a lot on MD and I am also not 'space rich' in EVE (at least not compared to other MD posters). I have been playing EVE for around 5 years and I have 3 accounts with a total NAV around 40-50B. Most of it is tied down in blueprints. Normally I do very low effort regional trading and blueprint research / copy. These activities are obviously low profit and slow turnover but they don't require a lot of my time which kind of suits my playing style.

Why?

In real life I am currently working on a team project which among other things involves drawing a lot of sketches. This means that I am currently spending a lot of my time drawing things at home. I have decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to do this trading experiment. While I don't have a lot of free time, I have no problem checking my market orders and updating them several times throughout the day (luckily that doesn't take a lot of time).

Rules

No help from main character at all. Everything had to be earned with ISK, skills and info only available from the trial character. When I was bored I was lurking in SCC channel and I was even role-playing a noob. Just to see what's the general attitude towards new traders and how easy / hard it is to get info and help.

Expectations

The goal of this challenge is usually to earn enough ISK to get a PLEX. I was kind of hoping to reach 1B by the end of this trial. In the end it turned out I had 1B by the end of day 13 already which was pretty unexpected. So yea, I am very surprised how this turned out.

Starting out and NAV reports

During the course of 21 days I have spent the most time playing EVE on the first day. Obviously the most important thing is to have some starting capital. I finished all the newbie tutorial missions and I ended up with around 10M ISK - this was quite a good number and I moved to Jita with this sum of money (it was actually around ~9,5M and some skill books which were later sold).

Every day before I would go to sleep I ran jEveAssets, calculated my total NAV and logged it into a spreadsheet, along with some notes. I also calculated daily ROI values (using ROI = (A-B)/B). jEve price settings were The Forge midpoint values, which gave me a pretty realistic and somewhat conservative numbers.

Note: Day 00 NAV is my initial capital which was around ~10M. All other numbers are copy paste from jEve.

Note 2: Somewhere around day 18 I slowly stopped buying items and spent the next days just selling off my stocks so day 21 NAV is pretty much all liquid ISK (well around 98% anyway).

---Day: ----------------------- NAV: --------- ROI(daily): --------- Profits(daily):

Day 00 ------------ 10.000.000,00
Day 01 ------------ 26.225.834,79 ----------- 162,26% ------------ 16.225.834,79
Day 02 ------------ 80.184.386,91 ----------- 205,75% ------------ 53.958.552,12 (bought all 5 beta implants)
Day 03 ----------- 116.065.885,35 ------------ 44,75% ------------ 35.881.498,44 (15.658 SP in trade)
Day 04 ----------- 180.642.452,02 ------------ 55,64% ------------ 64.576.566,67
Day 05 ----------- 212.048.942,12 ------------ 17,39% ------------ 31.406.490,10
Day 06 ----------- 219.944.124,08 ------------- 3,72% -------------- 7.895.181,96 (took a day off, no EVE at all)
Day 07 ----------- 292.591.087,76 ------------ 33,03% ------------ 72.646.963,68 (made my own corp)
Day 08 ----------- 391.491.757,26 ------------ 33,80% ------------ 98.900.669,50 (bought accounting skill)
Day 09 ----------- 522.549.782,55 ------------ 33,48% ----------- 131.058.025,29
Day 10 ----------- 656.653.198,64 ------------ 25,66% ----------- 134.103.416,09
Day 11 ----------- 801.031.273,75 ------------ 21,99% ------------ 144.378.075,11
Day 12 ----------- 894.597.906,12 ------------ 11,68% ------------- 93.566.632,37 (bought margin trading skill)
Day 13 --------- 1.059.142.857,14 ------------ 18,39% ----------- 164.544.951,02 (555k SP total, max 53 orders)
Day 14 --------- 1.303.849.700,46 ------------ 23,10% ----------- 244.706.843,32
Day 15 --------- 1.708.860.515,73 ------------ 31,06% ----------- 405.010.815,27 (weekend trading is awesome)
Day 16 --------- 1.833.355.920,67 ------------- 7,29% ------------ 124.495.404,94
Day 17 --------- 1.927.125.878,81 ------------- 5,11% -------------- 93.769.958,14
Day 18 --------- 2.045.068.893,57 ------------- 6,12% ------------ 117.943.014,76
Day 19 --------- 2.179.450.428,77 ------------- 6,57% ------------ 134.381.535,20
Day 20 --------- 2.548.470.588,60 ------------ 16,93% ----------- 369.020.159,83
Day 21 --------- 2.078.790.595,60 ----------- -18,43% ---------- -469.679.993,00 (bought a PLEX)

PS: New forums are horrible. Impossible to present data in a civil, formatted manner.

Part 2 incoming...
Noemi Kautsuo
Space Environment Creations LLC
#2 - 2012-07-15 14:15:51 UTC
...

My strategy:

1. Arbitrage station trading

I basically did almost no hauling at all - everything else is buy low, sell high in Jita.

One example where I did some miny-hauling was some skill book trading. At some point skill books for 'Light Missiles' were selling for 200k in Jita. I travelled 2 jumps away, bought 50x of them for like 20k and during the next two days I sold all 50 for 200k. On the third day people crashed the price and the same books were selling for like 30k in Jita. So I simply stopped trading in these. :)

2. High turnover, small stocks, constantly trading new items

I also tried to increase my turnover as much as possible. This means that I only kept small stocks of items. Sometimes I would even stop buy orders (even though the item seemed very profitable) and just waited until I was able to sold my existing stock before putting up new buy orders. It is very dangerous to keep large stocks in the current economy (almost all meta items are crashing).

For example at some point I was trading 'Heavy Modulated Pulse Lasers'. I was able to buy them for 900k and sold them for 1.7M. I kept small stocks and had no problem making tons of money. However only a few days later buy orders were already at 550k and item was selling for 900k. Since I kept small stock this change didn't affect me at all. I simply continued to buy them at a new cheap price of 550k and sold them for 900k. However people continued to crash them to the point where these lasers are now at 550k / 600k. When this happened I simply stopped trading in these and found a new item.

And this is basically what made me the most money. Just finding good opportunities like these, exploit them for a few days and move on to new items. On average I only traded certain items for like 4-6 days. Once people crash the price I just move the item to "Inactive" folder on my quickbar and I don't trade in them any more (from time to time I do check up on them to see if they recover - but it rarely happened). Market is constantly changing and I think a lot of new traders make a mistake and they stick to items that were once very profitable.

3. Active trading during peak hours

Usually I would update my orders like once every two hours throughout the day. But during peak hours I would actively trade for around 1-2 hours almost each day (a bit more on the weekends).

During this period of active trading I would aggressively trade in one or two fast moving items. For example on the weekend (on day 15) I would trade in +3 basic neural and ocular implants. I made 2M+ profit on each sale (~9M/12M for neural) and I was able to buy and sell a bunch of these.

I would also have like 3 buy orders for one item and like 2 sell orders. During the weekend and peak hours you will get outbid in a matter of 1-2 minutes. So having multiple buy orders means that you can constantly update prices and get your orders filled.

4. Items I traded

- Skill books - mostly during the first days, later I just didn't bother
- Meta items - these are generally pretty good... but you have to be super careful with current economy
- Cheap T1 items - these have great margins, and are awesome when you are starting out
- T2 ammo
- Beta implants - made a bunch of money on these... and I also lost around 100M on them on days 16, 17 and 18 because I kept too big stock and the prices kept, going down...
- Basic implants (during active trading only)
- Charges - during the last 3 weeks I bought around 7000x units of targeting range script for around 9k and sold them for 20k

Some tips

- If you can't update your orders several times throughout the day, don't bother with this type of trading (or move out of Jita). Or do swing trading with larger stocks - it can be dangerous in current economy though.

- Diversify. Everybody keeps saying that,because it's true.

- If you are active trading, use several buy and sell orders.

- Don't keep large stocks unless you know what you are doing.

- Don't stick to items when they are no longer profitable. Just move along and find new items. Keep the quickbar up to date, it's a great tool.

- Find better ways to trade. Being an ,01 ISK warrior is not fun. It is a 'brute force' method of trading. If you have good skills and capital you can make a lot of money though (especially on the weekends).

What's next?

Well I was going to end this experiment at this point. But since this little adventure has proved pretty successful I think I am going to let this experiment run for a month longer and see what happens. However I won't do this type of station trading any more. Now that my trial limitations are gone I will explore different methods of trading and use courier contracts. Jita is just one station among many and I'm pretty sure I can find some cool trading routes.

I don't really anticipate the same ROI returns in the next month but I'm sure it will be more fun - and that's the most important thing.
cigarellos
#3 - 2012-07-15 14:27:28 UTC
Good read +1

You should go for 10B now.
Rykker Bow
Center for Advanced Studies
#4 - 2012-07-15 14:29:35 UTC  |  Edited by: Rykker Bow
agreed, good read. I started out with skill books as well, I saw they were very profitable buying them at npc price and selling in Jita. Lots of great information here for the beginning station trader and indeed some tactics described here I still use today.

+1 as well

The Mjolnir Bloc - Lowsec PvP for the sophisticated - The Mjolnir Bloc Killboards
Darth Tickles
Doomheim
#5 - 2012-07-15 14:33:04 UTC
A good thread on MD? WTF is going on?
Corina Jarr
en Welle Shipping Inc.
#6 - 2012-07-15 15:46:06 UTC
Nicely done. Wish I had the patience for it...
Nathaniel Schereau
Elis Smexy Squad
#7 - 2012-07-15 16:35:40 UTC
Try doing it if you have ADD.. >.>

They call me Nate, Handsome Nate.
Makro SSRI
The Grey Eagles
#8 - 2012-07-15 17:17:55 UTC
This is how you station trade, excellent post!


Quote:
- Meta items - these are generally pretty good... but you have to be super careful with current economy

^^have always been like that in my experience

Looking forward to the continuation of your experiment...
Drago Wolfbane Skorvalk
Great Black Hole of Eve
#9 - 2012-07-15 19:35:25 UTC
Thank you!

I have been trading a little over 1 1/2 months now. I just picked up a valuable tip from your post!!

This made my day!! :)
clamslayer
Doomheim
#10 - 2012-07-15 20:35:56 UTC
right on, im almost temped to try my luck at this.

i have heard from other seasoned traders that there is a 24 hour to 1 billion isk off a new toon challenge that has been achieved by many. im not trying to take away from what you did because to be honest, i think the 24hours to a billion isk challenge must be bullhshit.

just something i wanted to mention to see if anyone has done it.
Noemi Kautsuo
Space Environment Creations LLC
#11 - 2012-07-15 21:02:30 UTC
clamslayer wrote:
right on, im almost temped to try my luck at this.

i have heard from other seasoned traders that there is a 24 hour to 1 billion isk off a new toon challenge that has been achieved by many. im not trying to take away from what you did because to be honest, i think the 24hours to a billion isk challenge must be bullhshit.

just something i wanted to mention to see if anyone has done it.


Unless you are scamming (and have incredible luck) or if someone buys your items by mistake (adding a couple extra zeroes) I would say it's pretty much impossible. In fact I don't think it's possible even if you would stay awake and trade for 24 hours straight - remember that you don't even have the skills to get some extra orders and to reduce taxes.

I'm sure that it's possible to get to like 4-5B in 21 days but you would have to spend A LOT of time actively trading. Possibly even going to such extremes that you would have to wake up in the middle of the night and update orders so you don't have to 'lose' those 8 hours.

Like I said, I am not really that good at trading and I apologize if I made it sound easy. But there is quite a lot of work and effort here.
Strrog
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#12 - 2012-07-16 00:27:49 UTC
A very positive read, so ermm you starting a bond someday here on MD ? Lol,
Aine Ni
Doomheim
#13 - 2012-07-16 00:46:28 UTC
Nice posts - looking forward to reading more
Duke Hitari
#14 - 2012-07-16 09:12:33 UTC
B4 I joined goons I had 800M isk in wallet
Just in 2weeks I've made over 16B in wallet and 1 Nyx in my assets, only sitting in vfk station talking to pubbies

s
Cebraio
State War Academy
Caldari State
#15 - 2012-07-16 10:03:09 UTC
Very impressive!

Wish I had the time and patience to do serious station trading. Bear
Noemi Kautsuo
Space Environment Creations LLC
#16 - 2012-07-16 13:21:27 UTC
Strrog wrote:
A very positive read, so ermm you starting a bond someday here on MD ? Lol,


Nope. Have no interest or need to raise public funding.

Duke Hitari wrote:
B4 I joined goons I had 800M isk in wallet
Just in 2weeks I've made over 16B in wallet and 1 Nyx in my assets, only sitting in vfk station talking to pubbies


That sounds cool. Would be really interesting to trade in busy 0.0 stations. Problem is getting access to them. :P
corestwo
Goonfleet Investment Banking
#17 - 2012-07-16 13:41:44 UTC
Duke Hitari wrote:
B4 I joined goons I had 800M isk in wallet
Just in 2weeks I've made over 16B in wallet and 1 Nyx in my assets, only sitting in vfk station talking to pubbies


That sounds cool. Would be really interesting to trade in busy 0.0 stations. Problem is getting access to them. :P[/quote]
He's talking about scamming. Trade in busy 0.0 stations is not as lucrative as you might think - the primary income would be importing to them, and competing with everyone else importing.

This post was crafted by a member of the GoonSwarm Federation Economic Cabal, the foremost authority on Eve: Online economics and gameplay.

fofofo
Darth Tickles
Doomheim
#18 - 2012-07-16 14:29:09 UTC
corestwo wrote:
Trade in busy 0.0 stations is not as lucrative as you might think - the primary income would be importing to them, and competing with everyone else importing.


Your experience may be skewed from being part of a large and very well-organized alliance. I've done 0.0 import/export in three different alliances, all of questionable quality ye reasonable size and activity (i.e. low competition, large market), and I found the returns to be far better than what I could achieve with similar time, capital, and effort in hisec.

Now, of course, this is useless in terms of any sort of "newbie" challenge. I just wanted to point out that there are lucrative "sweet spots" in nullsec importing where low competition intersects high activity (usually in a pet of a pet type alliance with lots of noobs).
corestwo
Goonfleet Investment Banking
#19 - 2012-07-16 15:01:33 UTC
Darth Tickles wrote:
corestwo wrote:
Trade in busy 0.0 stations is not as lucrative as you might think - the primary income would be importing to them, and competing with everyone else importing.


Your experience may be skewed from being part of a large and very well-organized alliance. I've done 0.0 import/export in three different alliances, all of questionable quality ye reasonable size and activity (i.e. low competition, large market), and I found the returns to be far better than what I could achieve with similar time, capital, and effort in hisec.

Now, of course, this is useless in terms of any sort of "newbie" challenge. I just wanted to point out that there are lucrative "sweet spots" in nullsec importing where low competition intersects high activity (usually in a pet of a pet type alliance with lots of noobs).


Fair point, and you're probably right about the skewed viewpoint. When your alliance operates a station that makes #14 on the list of busiest stations by trade volume...

This post was crafted by a member of the GoonSwarm Federation Economic Cabal, the foremost authority on Eve: Online economics and gameplay.

fofofo
Rakshasa Taisab
Sane Industries Inc.
#20 - 2012-07-16 17:56:37 UTC
Title is a lie, 10M ISK is not the same as 0 ISK.

Nyan
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