Market Discussions

I have been at the game for about 2 months now. Have really gone all in with the market and acquired a nice stash of isk. The problem is that I would like to do some other things! Have been running some missions and salvaging them with 2 separate chars and I also have a char that's just about maxed out in planetary interaction. Im looking for something to shoot for next.

I would like it to be rather passive as I am sure I wont be able to completely break free from trading on the market (its just too lucrative). I would be willing to train up a new char as I am currently at 4 chars on 3 different accounts. Im not too worried about the risk involved though it obviously comes into play when deciding what to do.

Basically im looking for something that I can invest a few billion in and receive fairly descent profits. I don't want to be spending too much time doing something like changing orders by a few pennies every 5 minutes.

Any advice and guidance is greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

What a coincidence. I recently got into market trading and have been going good returns(20 % per day), but unfortunately I only have a few hundred million isk, which limits my profits.

If you invest in my efforts, I will grow your investment in return for 50 % of the profits or, if you would prefer, 15% of the principle per week.

Message me if you have any further questions.

Generating a passive income is possible, but there are issues for new players:

(a) if you invest in a scheme by another player, you run a high risk of being scammed. You can get a 2-3% profit with a collateralized loan. Be wary of anything more.

(b) Other market opportunities may not be obvious to you.

(c) Other traders are not going to hand information to you on a plate. If they know of a good way to make passive income, they'll use the method themselves, and not divulge.

Maybe you can follow MD for a while, and see how more experienced traders invest on the forums.

In-game, the best option imho is to play the game, and eventually you'll figure out one of the many many ways of generating ISK without too much effort.

PI in a wormhole might be good semi passive income for a few bil. StationTrading is also fine complement to wormhole living. Cap escallations come close to several dozens bill trading operation. For such a capital small manufacturing operation might be ok but requires a lot of research to find what is worth manufacturing.

One word: FEDO

A few basic points...

1. A couple months of trading or playing experience isn't enough to really get a handle on either playing or trading. Trading is relatively simple in mechanics but the quirks and permutations can make it very complex. I'd suggest taking your time to really learn how the markets work. Again not the mechanics of how the markets work but really how the markets work. Study the market history.

2. You do not want to invest in various schemes put forth by other players unless you can lose it entirely. Essentially the isk you invest with has to be isk that you really don't mind losing. If it is a major portion of your assets or a huge problem if the investee scams you then you're doing it wrong.

3. Use real world examples to guide you in how to trade in Eve. As an example one popular method is to put buy orders in mission hubs for mission loot and then haul to trade hubs to sell. Or buy mission consumables in trade hubs and haul to mission hubs to sell. Buy in trade hubs and haul to high-sec systems close to popular battle or pvp systems and list sell orders with large markups for those with isk and not a lot of desire to jump 20+ systems just to outfit a few frigates. There are a lot of examples out there.

4. One hint for you: the markets work in cycles. Everything works in cycles. Manufacturers have their own schedules of when they need items or minerals to support their production and schedules when their production is complete and will be listed for sale in trade hubs. There are cycles during each week as people go to work or school, sleep or leisure time and this affects what is available and what the prices are. There are wild swings in availability and pricing depending on these cycles. There are daily cycles, weekly cycles, monthly cycles and etc. There are changes when there are holidays and depending on what holiday it is and where it is celebrated and by whom. Time things wrong and you'll pay top isk for inventory and make low margins. Time things right and you'll buy when the market is saturated and the prices are diving and then sell when the markets have dried up and people absolutely need what you have.

5. I would not suggest getting into investing unless your assets total above 10bil. Once you have accumulated at least 10bil by then you should have a decent grasp of things. Even then I'd suggest going into things slowly and carefully. Personally I don't invest in bonds or any other types of investments. I'd rather simply buy stuff because at the end of the day no matter what I still have ... stuff. I may not make a lot of isk on it but not losing isk or taking steps backwards is sometimes more useful than worrying about it.

Just my two shekels.

The only comment I will make about manufacturing is that I dabbled in it slightly. My personal experience was that in many cases you could buy items off the market for far less than it would cost -you- to make it. Simply because there are people who have invested large sums and a lot of time setting up highly efficient manufacturing setups with multiple POS, numerous characters, highly researched BPO/BPC and established sources of components/minerals, So I highly recommend you be very careful to run the profitability numbers before spending any isk at all setting up your own manufacturing setup.

In my case I thought having 6 well trained characters, BPO/BPC researched to 0% waste and very low manufacturing times along with purchasing large amounts of minerals and such at as low a price as possible by timing the markets that I would have a good position. Turns out I could put in a buy order for about 12% less than my lowest manufacturing cost item and still fill the buy order within a week. So if I went ahead and manufactured 1,000 of that item I would have actually spent about 11%-12% more than if I had just bought the things off the Jita market.

That was an unpleasant surprise to me. But very informative experience overall.

...

In your specific circumstance as you are going to school for economics I would seriously suggest the following:

1. If you do not already know it learn SQL. Being able to manage and manipulate datasets on a SQL server is invaluable in almost every circumstance I can imagine for someone in economics.

2. Install either Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition (free for download) or Oracle 10g Express Edition (free for download). To support your trading operations you will be crunching a lot of numbers and gaining experience with a SQL based server along with it is not something you can necessarily put on a resume but having the practical knowledge that becomes self-evident during an interview process can be invaluable as well. If for no other reason that it shows flexibility, a breadth and depth of knowledge and additional skills that can put you a step above any other job candidates.

3. Learn and use the Eve Online API system. There are any number of self-contained and packaged apps that will grab data through the API that you can then direct into updating an SQL based server. Once it is in the server then you can access the data through spreadsheets which will likely be the bread & butter of your profession for years to come.

4. You can gain market data from the API system of eve-marketdata.com which I generally use for mass updates into my own custom trading app.

5. At some point you may find yourself looking to learn how to program your own trading application or small utility programs. Where that takes you who knows but the eve forums are always a good place for getting advice on this subject.

Good luck!