Market Discussions

Perhaps its called "speculation trading", or part of it anyway.

Its a good method, can make isk for sure, but more risky.
You dont know what ccp will change, and how will the item react.

If you like it then why no :)

Buy low, sell high can definitely work. No surprise there. But you definitely need to do your research first. Bear in mind that sudden price changes can be engineered, and this is not usually not for YOUR benefit.

TLDR: do your research; but i'll try to expand the subject a little....


You should investigate the causes of the price jumps you noticed on your "volatile" item.

Just as example these jumps could be caused by:

> CCP releasing a new expansion that iterates/modifies the item you are watching or the items that can be made starting from the item you are watching.

> Bottlenecks in the production-to-market chain: that price jump might indicate - for example - an item built in specific areas of 0.0 space that regularly undergoes to war, thus disrupting the 0.0-to-highsec logistic and thus the market

> Spikes in the item consumption: those jumps might indicate - again as example - an item that sometimes is found in very short supply on the market due to production spikes of items that can be built starting from it

> Speculation: has the item a low-enough traded volume (compared to its value) that entire markets can be bough-out by speculator and the items themselves relisted with a significant price increase?

> Player-driven events / market manipulations: is the item subject to speculation (it or what it helps to produce is said to be nerfed/bumped by ccp in a future expansion)?

There might also be other situations that could explain that graph i might not have considered, so the list could be longer.

Generally speaking, you want to understand in which case you are and act accordingly trying to anticipate events to minimize the risk and maximize the profit.

For example, this are a few questions you should ask yourself if you think the item you are watching will get Bumped by CCP:

> Is CCP really bumping your item?
> Are you certain?
> Do you know for sure markets will react with a price spike?
> Has the item enough sales volume you can realistically hope to quickly liquidate your asset?
> Do you know how much of a price spike you can expect? 20%? 50%? more?
> Do you have enough ISK to make a consistent profit given the expected price bump?

So you see, each and every case could be different and lead to a completely different set of questions.

My suggestion is to do your research thorougly, never invest all your wallet in speculative markets, read all dev blogs and forums and test on sisi regularly.

Wish u good luck :-)

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Most of these questions that you've provided I played around with in my head, and makes sense. Due to these possibly being event-driven, or holding these items for an extended period of time it will require much more research - but buying in bulk and keeping stock until prices skyrocket due to such things as mentioned can yield an extremely high profit.

I didn't think about 0.0 bottlenecks, which is interesting. Is there certain items that can only be found in certain 0.0 regions/solar systems? As in Item A only exists in nullsec Solar Systems X, Y, and Z?

I began building an excel spreadsheet to keep up with all my transactions, but find that there's more logical information that I need to be displaying so I'll be working on building a .NET Application for myself so that I can collect information, do market trending, and keep up with all my orders correctly. I tried a program called EVE Mentat(?) and didn't really care for it.

This .NET application will probably be more like an Enterprise Asset Manager with Reseller Tools built into it. I've developed one before, so I'll probably just recycle some of it's code. One feature I'm looking forward to is that trading will be based on the actual asset itself and not the order - as seen with all the EVE market applications that I've seen thus far. I want to be able to look at an Asset, say Ammunition Item A, and see all the bulk orders that I've placed for that particular item. Then put in an X% amount for resell that I'd like to see for profit, and it give me the price that I'd need to sell those items for based on the average price paid for multiple different orders of that item.

Anyways, here's a screenshot of my spreadsheet - I just have test data plugged into it currently...

Long Term Trading Spreadsheet

I think the profits will be minimal if non existing at all. If i understand your plan, on paper it sounds gold and awesomly cool but as i think of 1 factor from gaming theory makes me rethink it. Im talking about "what will happen if everyone doing what im doing".
Waiting ages until ccp makes some change, then placing a bet on the outcome, although a calculated bet, is:
1. Too boring.
2. Too risky.
3. Hold no value as you are by far not the only one playing.

Just an example of latest times: R64materials vs items produced from, large fitted rigs vs new capital ones etc. are all turned out as bad investment for the time being, and will take a real long time until they bring profit if at all.
Its like buying all the gnosis ships you can and waiting 10 years to sell them at profit when they exctinct :) sounds cool, but who really wants to do it...

Sure, for example moon materials: they are located in low and 0.0, the most valuable moons move entire alliances to war (have you reacently heard about thulium?)



You can use self-made graphs to show trends and there are capsuleers in MD forum who will strongly advise you to do so. I suggest you to get in touch with Vaerah Vahrokha, she is an expert chartist if that is your thing

Personally I like to keep things simple and relay on excel worksheet that show me per-transaction margins, then i try to find the best margin for the highest sell-volume and repeat. It works but you might like it or not depending on your playing style.



Nice job on your spreadsheet. I wouldn't use it for my accounting (again, depends on my gaming style) but surely you could use it to keep an eye on your Net Asset Value and/or provide it as proof of your progressions in case you decide to pick a loan in the future.

Nope, but I'll look into it. That seems logical enough though, is there a news site or any good websites to gain political information regarding corporation warfares?



I'll most likely be integrating a Crystal Reporting tool into it, for pie charting and reports and such. You can do some really neat things with Crystal Reports.




If you look, that's just the front page of the spreadsheet that's fed all the "Overall" data from the rest of the spreadsheets. My individual orders and projected profit from the orders is accounted for in the other spreadsheets respectively.

Right now I have it to project out a recommended sell price of +20%. So if I buy an item and the price won't net me a profit of +20% of what I bought it for then I won't sell it. Broker Fee's and Taxes are included in this determination. For my Long-Term investing I'd like to stick to a +40% margin.

You might be interested at this thread.

The "be patient, reap larger rewards" reaped me more than a fitted Titan worth of purely AFK money.

Well, since you seem interested, I have created a whole website dedicated to:

- EvE trading "the normal way" including lots of references and links.

- EvE and RL swing trading, including past trades examples and a partial trading course, complete with videos! It includes appendixes describing both some of my EvE trades and how to import EvE market data into RL trading platforms, professional charting and more. All for free.