Market Discussions

So basically, I'm a new station trader who's been working pretty constantly to up my capital. I'm only experienced with simple buy and sell orders, but today was chatting it up with a much older player (we've spoken several times in my main's corp chat) and he offered me what seems like quite a deal, but I feel a bit in over my head, enough to make a first post on the forums on this toon for some questions. Basically, my total capital is under a bil, and my possible associate offered to sell me what I'm assuming to be his corp's pvp loot on a reular basis at right around jita buy prices, after a discussion we'd had about me being patient enough to .01 folks for a while sitting on my sell orders. Now this seems to have ups and downs, but I wanted to hear from someone with experience. On one hand, I'll be bypassing posting buy orders, which means fees, order slots which are currently at a premium, and the time taken to fill them. On the other hand, I won't have as much say in what I buy. Should I be dealing with my purchase prices and their percent difference from market buy prices on a per-order basis based on my profi percentages, or should I ask to agree on a set percent lower than market price? Are my own orders going to suffer from having to post his corp's sells, or it is more likely he'll only have a few of any given item and popular mods that sell fast at that? A rough estimate he gave me was ~5-600m worth every couple weeks, which I assume is a total formerly arrived at by him based on selling to buy orders? Assuming I pay attention to our orders, keep track of price and sales of these goods, and so on, can this be a trick? I don't really feel like I'm a big enough mark to be a worthy subject of a scam, and don't think that's going on here, but at the same time, I'm in 1mm above my head. Anyway, I just wanted to ask these few question from young but trying to learn station trader perhaps trying to make some of his first connections in this area of the game. Any advice,grief, commentary, offers to invest in my future, or requests for clarification of any points from this poorly written post are appreciate! And, o/ MD!

To the last paragraph, of course. To the feat few paragraphs, thanks for helping to tidy up my thoughts, giving me some pricing options to think about, and I appreciate your input!

In actuality, I don't sell in jita, and wasn't planning on hauling. I do work out of another major trade hub in empire, which is in the same faction's space as my possible associate operates when he's in high-sec. So, he'd be able to haul to the region I trade in. I just figured we'd use Jita's prices since they're not going to be too different for higher-end mods. I realize there will be a bit of difference, but it'll go both directions in the longer term.

The fact that he's hauling it for you makes a difference. Although I'm not sure how it really differs from buying the items yourself at market, other than you'd save the market slots as you say, but often with these things you can't always see if it's a worthwhile endeavor or not unless you actually test it out for a little while. I don't think you're getting scammed by the way, but I don't think you can really ask for more of a discount given he'll be hauling the stuff to the hub for you. And if there's not an extra discount then aside from saving the market order slots and some time I'm not sure what the benefit is.

It sounds like you've got it mostly figured out, but if it were me I'd probably just use the buy order prices for the hub you're trading at. With some things prices do swing wildly between hubs so it's probably best to double check your preferred hub plus Jita buy prices to make sure neither you nor your corpmate are getting a bad deal.

Good luck!

This. He just wants to dump stuff, but we figured if he sold it to me at buy prices it'll open my slots up, I won't have to wait for orders to fill, and he won't have to sit his orders.