Market Discussions

Any suggestions on how to properly read the price history data when I sell minerals that I mine in a trade hub?

I've been using the avg sales price for the previous week as a guide. It puts me above the buy order price, but usually a good bit under the other serious sell orders in the market. I'm not a station trader so I don't want to spend time playing the .01 isk game, but I also don't want to contribute to bringing down the price of the minerals.

the best place to sell stuff without affecting the wider market is amarr.
esp ice products.
just sell to the highest buy order and you will be golden.

By choosing to mine and sell what you mine you're increasing the supply of minerals on the market. You will have an (insignificant) effect on the price whether you like it or not. However, pricing your goods lower won't make a difference either way. The volume of minerals is so huge that a few lower priced sell orders won't even be noticed.

I'm a bit skeptical that one guy selling the minerals he mined is going to bring down the price of minerals.

Since I've got good refining skills I've experimented with buying ore in the boonies and hauling the minerals to a hub along with mine, so it's frequently one of the bigger sell orders in the hub. But I see your point.

I also didn't mean to imply I'm asking this question out of altruism. I'd like to maximize my profit while selling the minerals fairly quickly (within 3 days as Tau suggested). Sometimes the big sell orders are priced way above the buy orders and I don't understand why.

So I was asking if there is a better formula than my current approach of checking trending avg price + buy order prices in Jita. I guess I could price to comparable quantity sell orders and then adjust prices in 3 days if it hasn't moved.

Looks like you are doing it right. Most buy prices will be too low and some will be ridiculously low. Likewise some sell prices are ridiculously high and most a bit too high. Just sell at a sensible price so you make more ISK but leave some profit for the next guy.

It's better if you can to sell by private contract as that saves millions in taxes. Never open trade in Jita and make sure you have people like 'Yummy Yummy Yummy' blocked. Until recently listing on the 'Bulk Trade' mailing list was a good way to sell minerals but after the 75 million ISK per annum listing charge was introduced sellers have fled from that service. Others have opened up in its place though such as, I think, 'Wholesale Trade' which are steadily gaining more custom.

Except that guy's name is Chribba and he melts down his Velspar mountains.

If you have the spare order slots, it can often be a good idea to place a sell and/or buy order well outside of the normal trading range for anything that you trade a lot of. The reason is that a small percentage of people will select the wrong order and grossly overpay or ask far too little for the items, resulting in a sweet bonus for you.

For example, you trade an item whose normal inside bid/ask is 900k by 1m, with all sorts of depth on each side. If you are frequently at the inside of the market (highest bid/lowest ask), then place a bid of say 900 isk, and ask of 1 billion.

You will not frequently get a bite, but when you do, you'll smile. In Karan last year, I was kicking myself for not updating my orders frequently enough. Someone paid 10 billion isk for a mwd that was trading at 10m isk. The 10b sell order was mine, but a lucky trader had .01'ed me and snagged quite a sale.



*edit* for clarification, the trade still fills with the order at the inside price, but at the price of the market order (the 2nd party who comes in to complete other side of trade.) This is not how the real markets work outside of occassionally pink sheets where market makers are sometimes happy to screw you eve style.