Market Discussions

Hey all. I am a returning player looking to change up my play style. I used to think mining was a way of life. It got boring and I jumped into manufacturing. I did the PvP thing with some success, but it was expensive. After a year hiatus, I am back. I've been doing a little research, and I am looking to get into station trading, or just flat trading. I've spent a lot of time in wormholes and down in nullsec. It was fun, but you are always watch your back from payday to payday.

I will be on this evening for a few more hours, and the rest of the week. I am looking for someone to mentor me. Help me get down the right track. I currently have 170m liquid and another 300m in tangible assets to get in the game. If you have the time, and are willing I would appreciate it.

Safe Travels,

TerrorXS

Sorry for the copypasta from another post but short on time.

In lieu of a mentor at the moment, I would highly recommend going and having a look at the trading section on the EVE Uni wiki http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Trading#Station_Trading

Great advice for starting off. The impromptu guide is pretty good (it's an audio guide on soundcloud but I prefer that rather than pages of technical information), and the Bullwoth Burger method for identifying items to trade is a good model to start from.

Also a few pieces of advice I learned the hard way:

- Update your buy orders more often than your sell
- Remember you're in it for the long game. What you do on the market may not necessarily make you a lot of money there and then, but small amounts over a period of time on each order, which adds up.
- Get yourself some sort of trading program (EVE Mentat, EVE Stats etc)*
- Limit how often you let yourself look at your orders. I actually felt I was doing much better when I limited myself to updating orders just twice a day, over breakfast and in the evening. Otherwise I just sat there 0.01 grinding and got pretty frustrated. Well. Applies to Jita at least. It's all about the maximum output for the minimum input. You start to get diminishing returns pretty quickly.

*(Other quality market programs are available.)

First you need some isks

A lot of good information here. I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the advice in many market threads, while good of course, is perhaps just slightly out of context in some cases as everyone's different and will approach trading with a slightly different style and methodology. Just keep that in mind - my point is, some conflicting advice doesn't necessarily mean that one person is right or wrong, often just coming from a different perspective. So don't feel confused if people don't always agree as they're probably both right based on their own trading style.

An extension of that concept and also the reason for my post is to suggest that you choose one method of trading (station trading, regional trading, manufacturing for market, etc etc) and stick with it for at least a couple of weeks at minimum. This is simply to give it time to work. People do tend to jump from method to method hoping for that one magic bullet that will put nine or ten figures in their account but the reality is that it takes some time to get to that point.

If I were in your position I'd liquidate everything I own so I had was an account full of isk to use only for trading (remember that money makes money), follow the advice of people above and buy items low and sell them for a higher price where there's a decent volume selling (this is a very broad piece of advice, as there's many methods and opportunities all over and it would take a mammoth post to explain it all), and give yourself two to three weeks of doing the same thing to see how it works.

If you don't give it some time you won't know what's working and what's not and be able to learn from your mistakes and tweak your trading to make it better. It will, of course, take some time to learn and settle into your trading style, to set up your network of buy/sell orders and generally get established. But before too long you'll find that your have multiple billions, and eventually tens of billions of stock on the market and possibly also in buy orders/escrow, and that's when you start making hundreds of millions and billions per week.

Good luck!

I've read through the Eve Uni document on station trading. I've listened to 1/2 of the mp3's they have listed. I sat down and tried to understand the Price history graph, and I am starting to get it.

I have invested over 100m into the market and I have made approximately 20% profit.

I have found it more adventitious to stick to the higher dollar items with a larger profit margin. But I am finding it hard to understand what to look for.

I'm not looking for someone to tell me what to buy and sell. What I would like is someone to help me understand the market. How to read between the lines to know when to buy and dump my stocks. Teach me how to control the market through price manipulation.
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Plus it doesn't hurt to find others in the market like myself that we can grow to trust one another and bounce our ideas off. What works, what doesn't.

Thank you for the tips thus far. I know every master chess player was once a beginner. Safe Travels.

TerrorXS

Terror, I can understand how a lot of this seems somewhat cryptic as we were all there once. I'll try and make it a little more black and white:

1. Buy low - either do this by buying at Jita at the going sell price, setting up buy orders for items anywhere you choose (you'l learn where works and where doesn't through trial and error, and this can also include Jita), or manufacturing the items yourself;

2. Sell High - simply go where the people are and sell what you've got to them, as people don't generally want to travel to get their stuff, so exploit that.

3. Don't over-complicate it - it sounds to me like you're trying to understand capital flows, technical chart analysis, and perhaps other advanced market concepts. While you're in the early stages, ignore all that stuff - personally I've never once tried to understand all of that stuff in the Eve market/economy as I've just never needed to. Just focus on points 1 and 2 to start with, have a think about where the demand is, and satisfy that demand.


Much of what I'm saying has been quoted by Ethan above in the second sentence of his post. It's little gems of information like this that you need to latch onto and consider, look at the in-game map for clues, and then do a little trial-and-error trading.