Market Discussions

Hello fellow traders :)

I am relatively new at station trading and I am looking for advice on how to improve.
I am aware that noone wants to share their secrets and that I am not going to get very specific advice.

I am currently based in Amarr (I don't really like the „pace“ of Jita) where I'm looking for items
with a notable difference between the highest buy and the lowest sell order so I can resell the item
with a profit immediately after I bought it. That's basic station trading of course.
In the past 3 weeks I managed to grow my capital of 1B ISK into roughly 3B ISK.
That is maybe not excellent but I guess I'm doing fairly well.

So my question is...
How do I get to the next level? How can I further increase my returns? What's the next step?

I can think of the following options:

1. Get into more different items (increase profit by increasing number of traded items)
2. Get into more expensive items (more profit per traded item)
3. Speculate. Start to learn how a products price moves over time and abuse this instead of
reselling immediatelly after purchase. (i.e. Buy when a product is really low and
sell half a year or so later when it's really high)

Anything I left out?

I would very much like to hear your stories. How did you „make it“? Was there some kind of
crux, that you needed to overcome?
I highly appreciate any advice :)

Research, research and more research. Keep adding to your knowledge base of the items that you trade in the station you are in and keep updating the items to maximize your profit to time availability ratios. After only a few weeks of station trading I'd venture to say you are only just skimming the surface of understanding the ebb and flow of the market at the station you are trading at.

Once you settle on a set of core items to trade in, watch for the price cycles of the items you trade in and start using that to your advantage by switching to the most profitable items while the less profitable items re-adjust themselves pricewise.

Manipulations can boost profits but can be risky if you don't know the item (and other traders that trade it) you're dealing with.

Speculations can be very profitable but like manipulations can backfire on you just as spectacularly.

IMO, stick with station trading as your core revenue stream and slowely start trying out new things such as manipulating and speculating on the market. Learn from your mistakes, they will happen, and adjust strategies accordingly. Keep track of what works and what doesn't and keep fine tuning your game plan.

GL

edit: I personally stay far away from long term speculation as you're at the mercy of CCP. If they decide to nerf or change something it can have dire consequences. Thats not to say it cannot be done, and I know a few people who have made absolute fortunes doing just that.

Moar trading = Moar profit


To a degree yes, but higher value items tend to be lower volume, so it balances out.


There is big money here but you have to be sure what you are doing as you take much more of a risk than turning it round immediately where you can see the margin.

You will find that you cant triple your wealth consistently as you will hit diminishing returns. Unless you don't value the skin on your fingers, your eyeballs, and human interaction, you will reach a point that is hard to get past when looking at a % return on your capital. 2 billion in three weeks is good work if you started with 1 billion. You might still find it hard to make more than 2 billion when you have 10 billion capital however - when it comes to station trading a big part of it is how much time you have.

In short, there isn't really a 'next level' to move to, other than getting better at what you are doing and putting more capital into it, and speculation, which is more investment than trading.

I can attest to this. I have a trader alt, and I find it very easy to go from nothing to earning a billion a week. But I can't seem to get past that income level, regardless of how much money I have (i.e. when I hit 1B in assets, I was making 1B a week, when I hit 2B in assets, I was making 1B a week, I'm now at 4B in assets, and I'm still making 1B a week). Granted, I try to minimize my trading time so I can focus more on PVP. If I upped my time trading, I'm sure I could increase my income.

But that said, earning lots of ISK isn't my primary reason for playing EVE, so with a 1B ISK per week income, I'm making more than enough to pay for my two accounts and fund my PVP activities.

It could very well be that earning lots of ISK is your personal goal, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if it isn't, then why worry about it?

Probably not. There is a limit as to how much ISK you can make in a given amount of time. That amount varies greatly, depending on what's your chosen means of making ISK, and how efficient you are at it.

That said though, I don't think your current rate of 1B/week is anywhere near the upper limit of ISK income you can make trading.

If you want an idea of how much ISK can actually be made trading, take a look at this blog: http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/. He's pulling in 1B+ per day. However, he has stated that he plays 2-3 hours a day.

Margin trading is not essential in the sense that you can't place buy orders without it. But this is a really good example of what I mean by "efficiency", so let's dig into it a bit.

You stated that you have all of your money working in the market. This is good. Money in your wallet is money that's not working. However, you're not using that invested money efficiently, because when you put a buy order, you're really just moving your ISK from your wallet to another account that's not doing anything until a buy order is fulfilled.

Here's an example. Let's say you have 10,000,000 ISK to invested in buy orders, and you have margin trading at 0. You decide to trade in Module X, which can be bought for 1,000,000 ISK a piece, and it can be sold for 1,200,000 ISK, a nice 20% profit (I'm ignoring the fact that prices fluctuate a lot just to keep the focus on the effect of margin trading on your income). You put up a buy order for 10 of these modules, for a total of 10,000,000 ISK.

Let's say I also have 10,000,000 ISK, and I have margin trading 3. I also decide to trade in Module X. I also want to put a buy order for 10 units. Because of margin trading 3, my escrow is 4,218,750 ISK, instead of 10,000,000 ISK. So after putting up my buy order, I still have 6M+ ISK to do stuff with, so I buy a Rifter, fit it and go missioning. You're stuck in station waiting for orders to fill.

In the end, we both have 12,000,000 (after the buy orders are fulfilled and items are resold). But I have a bit extra because I had cash to invest in missioning while I was waiting for the orders to fulfill.

Despite my stupid example of missioning with a Rifter, I think it's pretty clear to see who's ISK is working more efficiently.

One thing to remember is that margin trading in EVE is not like margin trading in the real world. There is no borrowing cost in EVE, there are no margin calls in EVE. At worst, if you don't have the money in your wallet to fulfill a buy order, then the order just fails. Really, the only downside to margin trading is if you drain your account to 0 ISK putting up buy orders, you won't have any cash to fulfill orders.

My advice is to go ahead an train margin trading if you plan on doing a lot of trading, it does pay off.