Market Discussions

Hi,
I'm asking this here because I couldnt find a place over at eve central to ask questions and I assume the knowledge is here.

Using the API I get a result like this:
sell:
volume:367
avg:1370774.16
max:1400000.00
min:1359965.89
stddev:14005.33
median:1359975.93
percentile:1359965.90

(xml tags removed because the forum doesnt allow it)

volume, avg, max and min is clear.

now can somebody explain in plain english how the stddev, median and percentile relates to every day trading in eve?
As far as I know the standard deviation means how far away the data samples are from the median. So would this mean that the majority of sell orders in this example range from 1359975.93 - 14005.33 to 1359975.93 + 14005.33 (or half +/- of 14005.33). Or does it means something else.

is median the peak of the curve? like the highest sell order around?

now percentile?

Thanks for some help. Please don't throw wikipedia links on statistical math at me. Need plain english and practical help on how to use those numbers for everyday market decisions.

thanks
/Snusk

I will consider that. now have you anything useful to say?

*yawn* I know the basic buy low sell high principle, and I know it might involve some transport. For my market decision it is of interest how the distribution of the market orders looks like. And that is why I wanted some understanding what those numbers really mean. If you dont know go troll somewhere else.

true, but I'm currently in the process of scouting out new business opportunities for a small manufacturing venture. That is why I'm using the API to gather price data, rather then flying to every region in empire to check input material prices and potential product sell prices/volume. Once I've found the best regions to operate in I will do a closer market research locally.
And I like to tinker with my own database and scripts and stuff.

thank you.

The ST.dev is useful if you've found an item that trades within a static range of values and you're not worried about demand for the item changing. It's a solid strategy if you don't have the time to update your orders every day.
A lot of traders do this intuitively after a while, buying up stock during the week when things are cheaper, and selling when reserves start to dry up on saturday/sunday.

No knowledge of average is needed.

The buy low / sell high is also an unhelpful suggestion, because markets rarely have a "low" and "high" (called historical low and high) but most often have local minimum and maximums.

There's also another motto: "buy dips". That too only works only after you learn that a "dip" could be a real swing low - that is the local minimum, that is a Good Thing - or could be the beginning of a precipice where you buy at what you believe to be a dip and the next week price crashes in your face.

In order to learn all what's needed the only two ways are:

• become a very, VERY knowledgeable trader of few focused markets, know all their fundamentals, know all the patch notes influences, know the various intricate politics that might move their price (see Technetium)


• study Price Action and see the same markets under a market actors behavioral point of view. Fully learning this, is not necessarily easier nor quicker to do than the above.
In this respect, there are just two EvE threads covering this kind of trading:


     - The Slow Sell System for Lazy Marketeers.
        It introduces some basic concepts in a very easy and understandable way.

     - My own quite low winded and full in depth Experiment #01: RL finance analysis applied to EvE.
       Tangentially related to the above, it attempts bridging the gap between EvE and RL markets with one common setup.

Percentile:

The price you would pay, per unit, if you were to buy from/sell to the lowest/highest 5% of the market orders.

It's a way of eliminating the outliers from screwing up your figures, which can happen, if you're not simulating a buy of an appropriate size.

Thread pruned of trolling....

Please keep posts on topic.