Market Discussions

You're going to get all kinds of different answers.

Read them and take the parts you like. The thing to decide is which 'trade style' you like and want to maintain. Station, hub arbitrage, Region Wide, Inter-Regional, Intra-Regional Contracting, Long Term, Spread Monkey (aka 0.01 ISKing), etc etc.

So long as you sell at a price higher than you purchased, and at a high enough price to cover broker fees and taxes, you will make a profit. Play with the different styles. Find out which one you like best. Some styles are better suited to Jita, some styles are better suited to backwaters. The trick is finding a style you like, that has an impact on where you do business.

Shockingly good answers.

Whether you like jita or not depends on your playstyle.

Adunh has covered the various types of trading, and basically, there are as many types of trading as there are traders.

Feel free to hop into the Lounge, or GMBA or Syndicate Rookie Traders channels to say hi and ask questions

Based on my (admittedly limited) experience as a station trader, here’s what I would advise:

1. Have a dedicated alt as a station trader, training only the relevant skill-set. Don’t try to part-time it while you’re mining or missioning or pvping; do all of that on separate accounts.
2. Keep your portfolio diverse. My rule has been never to have any one item take up more than 5% of my net worth (to include outstanding buy and sell orders combined).
3. Volatility does not always equal opportunity. When you’re just getting started, keep an inverse relationship between position size and the volatility of an item’s price. Later, once you’ve gotten a better sense of how the markets function and you have some liquidity to experiment with, then you can try speculating in the higher-risk markets.
4. Study the price history graph carefully and look at the data table before you post a bid. Make sure you’re not buying at the top of a spike. Also, check to see that people are actually filling buy orders at the current price; if it’s too low, then you’re just tying down your ISK in escrow for no good reason.
5. On sell orders, don’t get carried away with the 0.01 ISK game. The amateur thinks that if he’s not clicking his mouse, he’s not trading. I’ve found that the best trade is often just to sit on your hands. Also true IRL.
6. Train margin trading to at least level 4 ASAP. Then, try to keep at least 2 ISK in buy orders for every 1 ISK in cash. It looks nice in your wallet, but holding too much cash is a dead weight for growth.

I could go on, but I don't want to build a wall of text.

It depends.

If I am station trading actively with high volume items, then I keep the price nearer the top.

If I am station trading passively with items, I just list them at the price I like, and leave them there.

With my region buys and sells, I just list them and forget

Funds that aren’t “tied up in escrow” (in buy orders) are just sitting in your wallet. Cash in your wallet is doing nothing for you, if you’re a serious trader.

How often to modify a sell order price depends on the item’s trade volume, the size and price of the sell orders ahead of you in the queue, and the trendline of the price history. If it looks like you’re at the bottom of a cycle and everyone else is still in panic-selling mode, I’d recommend leaving your sell price untouched for a few days or so. If you just passed a peak and prices are starting to trend downward, you might want to update your sell order price much more frequently.

Be wary of the “If you're not modifying your price, you're doing it wrong” approach. I’m sure that works for MotherSammy. But I’d suggest not being too eager to give up millions of ISK in profit just to be first in the queue and see a green transaction in your wallet.

If your a newbie, the best all around advice is to keep buy orders at "solar system" or just station, lots of them! modify as if you where going for the world record on fastest mouse clicker in the world.

Regional trading in trade hubs is suicide for a newbie, once again Im going to say it, I watch them come and go, they usually go with a loss of ISK as its a Massive investment, both time and ISK.
Margins are horrible, so your cycles would be 50-100B isk, in other words amass 50-100B isk of goods and begin the long hauling process (20-30 hours) because Jita is the place to go if you want your overloaded freighters going poof.
instead do what I did, go to some backwater region and start off nice and easy for goods that move well and goods where you can make a solid 50%-90% margin by filling orders in closeby tradehubs.

Keep in mind some goods are heavy (like tritanium and battleships which only fit into freighters) others are nice and light.
aim for the light stuff as buying and skilling for a full blown freighter shouldn't be your first objective, ever.

Also keep in mind, many freighter pilots (if not most) scan the cargo they transport, if you use public Currier contracts, its only a matter of time before your best finds find competition and it will be very fast as iv learned on my own skin.

Start with small hauler and move to freighter once you have 12B isk.

Once again, start trading "station" in a smaller trade hub, and then slowly work into a 100% maxed trader with at-least 7 caldari standing if you want to eventually move into Jita.

Jita is a tough place if you dont manufacture 10 slots of stuff, that's where a good chunk of your ISK will come from, think of it as the bread and butter that holds you up when competition is particularly nasty (some weeks, sometimes)

Play your cards right and don't rush, and you will survive and be confident your standing on solid ground.

Be original, stepping on some ones food, especially some one much bigger will almost always end in crappy profits or loss of ISK.
Originality is the most profitable way to go up fast.

my 5 isk

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