Market Discussions

Eh I chalk it up mainly to people being buttes about the whole thing. I use to sell t2 drones in dodi and there was this one guy who would undercut me and reduce the profits by sooo much. Since his order was big enough and others were not very patient they .01 isked him and he would undercut by a large margin etc etc....

I sold some drones to him and found his name and sent him a mail and he said he was tired of .01 isk wars and was satisfied with lower profit at the cost of selling stuff. Now I dont think he actually sold much this way but i could be wrong.

A lot of the point brought up in this thread are valid, some i didnt even think about xD, can't ever know why a person does what he does, even if you ask. I like to compare it to regular pvp. It is a lot like bringing more numbers or off grid boosters or *insert non e-honor ship/tactic* to a "fair" fight. Did you have to? Maybe not, but its not about having a close fight for them, all they want is a killmail and a nice green line on the killboard. Its how duders play, can't do too much against that beside have an investment in a lot of other items and hope those duders dont multiply...

Did you ever follow dayprices of palm-oil in Europe? They have such changes.

Its a very depended market.

Table 1. Palm oil: production, export, import, and consumption (for food and non-food purposes) in 2011/12. All figures are million tonnes.

Production: 50.7 (Indonesia 25.9, Malaysia 18.2, Thailand 1.5, Columbia 0.9, Nigeria 0.8, other 3.4)
Exports: 39.0 (Indonesia 18.2, Malaysia 16.6, other 4.2)
Imports: 38.1 (India 7.5, China 5.8, EU-27 5.2, Pakistan 2.1, Bangladesh 1.0, USA 1.0, other 15.5)
Consumption: 48.9 (India 7.4, Indonesia 7.1, China 5.8, EU-27 5.1, Malaysia 3.0, Pakistan 2.1, Nigeria 1.3, Thailand 1.1, USA 1.0, Bangladesh 1.0, other 14.0)

When exports from Indonesia or other exporters have problems, you see it in the price immediately. Think about storms, piracy in the horn of Africa, or just a delayed oil tanker, tax changes, etc.

In the bitchin about it aspect of the thread (this thread comes up so often I think that it is a cathartic release of angst venting of frustration)

As I value my time more than the extra ISK, I like to put items up for sale in stations in a region where no other traders are operating.

I will purposely price my items higher than the other traders to show that I am not agressively competing with them.

It irritates me when they still come into "my" station, and put product for sale.

BUT, even though I am irritated, I do understand their motivation IF they are willing to spend lots of time trading.

They hope to drive me out of the region by wasting my time. They want to harvest all of the volume in the region.

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However.. "them be fighting words" for me if I am playing the game actively .. and even if I'm just updating skill q's it is a matter of pride that I agressively check those prices.

If they get too cheeky about it, I'll bring in extra inventory and distribute it in many stations.

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"Honor among thieves" - I think it is good etiquette to stay out of others stations in far flung regions. It is sort of prisoners dilemma: if traders decide to cooperate there is more profit all around.

Because the profits and turn-over are fairly slim in far off regions.. especially when you are drastically over pricing things... the practice is only worth the time when there is very little time investment (checking prices once a month ideally)


Most common Result - rather than me being driven from the market by their agressive attempts to take over "my" station, they end up losing interest in the region after a month and leave it back with me...

... it is a fruitless waste of time for them and hurts my profits and wastes my time too

But, this is a PvP game an to be honest, it makes it more fun sparring with another human than making more ISK

Market tears, best tears

The really interesting phenomenon is not that someone will undercut existing orders, but that the traders with the existing orders will follow the undercutter all the way to unprofitability.

When I want to buy or sell something quickly, I usually significantly outbid (or underbid) the best existing order. Splitting the bid/ask spread, instead of buying the ask or selling to the bid. Sometimes I get a quick fill and go on my merry way. But more often than not, I immediately get .01'ed. So I significantly outbid (or underbid) again. Often I get .01'ed again. And repeat. Sometimes I keep doing it just to see how silly the traders are. I have used single quantity buy orders to move multiple 1000's quantity buy orders all the way up to the lowest sell. Sometimes I will buy the lowest several sell orders, then run the buy orders up past where I bought, and then dump to them. Just for fun - and just to prove how ridiculous trader behavior can be (mine and yours).

When it's an item I really do want to trade in, I'll have positions buying AND selling, and I will have determined where I want the buy and sell price to be, and what I want the margin to be, and I will DEFEND my positions. I won't follow some single quantity order all over the map. If somebody splits the bid and ask with an order, I don't change my orders, I buy or sell their order, removing it from "my" market. The only way that can hurt me is if my initial numbers were wrong, and in that case I need to correct them.

You really didn't show a good example, 1 order does not a market make. Sometimes, when I would want to aquire a BPO, I had time and didn't need it right away, so I'd put up a buy order for a couple hundred million less than whatever the going rate was. Sometimes I would get it and sometimes I wouldn't.

As for the .01 wars, well that's part of the price of selling something that everyone else is trying to sell. For the most part I don't sell in Jita, because I don't want to spend ALL my game time managing my orders. Instead I manufacture VAST quantities of items, (Dozens of Ships, Hundreds of Mid-ranged items, Thousands of Lower end items) and post them for sale at rates anywhere from 25 to 100% higher than Jita. Because of their high prices and out of the way locations, I usually don't have to replace the orders for anywhere from a month to 3 months, but almost all my orders sell out before they expire and I make quite a decent profit margin along the way. The best part is my TIME is freed to do other more interesting things than sit around and babysit orders from others who are trying to undercut me by a penny. Most of the places I sell in don't really have anyone else selling the same items. If I find that there's too much competition at a Station to where I have to start playing the undercut game, I simply more my wares to another station.

As long as I get value added I don't care how low I go. Since I gather most resources through time and missiles, not through pretend money investment, that price can go pretty low.

Depends on how that time is spent.

Simple I have crashed prices down low enough in some markets all my competition picked up and left for Jita. This gave me a good week of having almost no competition and than slow competition compared to before for an additional 2weeks after that. So I made very little money at first, lost actually if you looked at isk/h compared to anything else I could have done. But made it up with the isk I made by being one of if not the only active seller for awhile. Pretty much if you bought that product that you bought it from me and I set the prices.