Market Discussions

Recently I returned to Eve and have started trading. It's gone well for me for the most part. I have a few questions on what to do now though.

Let me explain what I do and see if you guys could give me some tips...

I started with around 250M. In 3 weeks, I've got around 1.2B in liquid/sales/escrow and 124M assets (Fit Viator). I would be over 1.5B but I made a few mistakes and mistyped a few numbers. I typically trade for 1-2 hours a night and several hours a day on the weekend. Even with making some serious mistakes and taking 200M in losses, I'm seeing a 75% increase to assets each week.

My Tools:

Eve Central
Eve Mogul
Self-made Auto-Updating Price Comparison Spreadsheets
Eve Mentat (don't use very often)

My strategy has been as follows:

I focused on small, cheap items that had high margins (50+%) at first. I station trade the more profitable, faster-moving items and haul any extra stock I acquire to a new hub. I have a few items I station trade in three major hubs now. Typically, I ship my stock to the highest selling of the three. This seems to work out fine and the margins are great (75%+) but the isk amounts are small (20k-40k profits each). The turn around is good but I'm only making a few million a day off of this. It doesn't take but a minute or two to update the orders so I have continued to do it. I don't ship my extra stock to another station unless I'm already going there so there is not much time invested. Are these a waste of time at this point?

I moved to more expensive items with slightly slower turn over rates and around 20% margins(frigates, cruisers, more expensive mods). I make around (200k-2M) a trade off of these. They have been my "bread and butter" for two weeks or so. I typically station trade these as I don't really have the cargo space to haul larger items. I have made a lot of isk off of these!

My next, and latest, step was buying items in the price ranges of 20M-50M each with margins of 10%+(Faction Mods, T2 ships, T3 subs). While I am making decent isk off of these, most of my orders are experiencing a lot of undercuts. If I am able to adjust my prices constantly, I reap very nice rewards. Last Sunday, I set my record at 168M in profit. Unfortunately, I have a job and am unable to watch my orders as closely as I did on Sunday. I come home to find my prices have been undercut several times. This severely affects my profits. I know that I could deep undercut, driving prices close to equilibrium, to increase sells while taking a smaller profit but would it be more profitable to take the isk and put it into the cheaper/faster-moving items?

When I find myself with extra isk, I usually check Eve Central Trader Tool for tips for hauling between trade hubs. When I see something I'm interested in, I reference it in my spreadsheet (auto updating) to see the sell order prices. Often I find myself buying from Sell Orders and relisting as a Sell Order in another hub (as opposed to selling to the buy). If there is a decent profit to be made selling to the Buy Order, I will go that route and look for another hauling opportunity. Some items, I will sell half my stock to the Buy Order and then relist the other half. It just depends on the margins and how much time I have that day.

Eve Mogul has been a big help to me. Using it's FIFO inventory system, I can keep track of what my current stock costs and set my prices accordingly. Previously I used a self-made Buy/Sell Order spreadsheet to track my costs. It was a pain to keep up with though. If I had figured out a good spreadsheet setup to track inventory/costs accurately, it would have been nice. Eve Mogul doesn't have all of the information I want. Its profit tracking is extremely nice though.

I tried using Eve Mentat for a little while, but never really felt comfortable with it. Maybe I didn't understand it as well as I would have liked to. It just didn't seem to give me as much information as I wanted.

Currently I have Buy/Sell orders in 4 major hubs. Every day I fly a route between them updating prices and checking for hauling opportunities. It takes me an hour or two.

My questions:

Would it be more profitable to focus on few hubs?

With the information I've given above, what do you feel my most profitable strategy would be?

As traders accumulate more isk, 2B, 5B, 10B, what do they typically start doing with the extra? More expensive but slower moving items with tighter margins? Minerals? PLEX?

If you were me, what opportunities would you be looking for?

How does a trader stay organized? While I have Eve Mogul and my spreadsheets, it feels a bit chaotic. I have several items for sale at several different hubs. I don't even know what most of it is/does. Does trading always feel this way? What could I do to fell like I have it organized?

Any general advice is appreciated.

Thank you for your time.

Jyak

Hi Jyak and welcome to MD,

Initially it seems to me that you are operating in 4 hubs whilst also travelling between them with no alts? If this is the case then your main problem is going to be keeping on-top of your operations efficiently. From your post, I would say you are Region to Region Trading at the moment and that's not really my forte, I'm purely a Station Trader, but I do operate in multiple stations without interlinking the operation. So although I will give you some advice, I'll leave it to other R2R traders to touch on that.

Tools
The only one I use above and beyond is Elinor, it's well worth looking into, you can find it on the EVE Tech Forum, it's essentially a margin calculator.

Strategy
Do you know the value of the markets in which you are trading in? For example, if you continue to trade item X in Hubs ABC and D, what is the total volume traded in that criteria. Since you must understand that even IF it was possible to camp your orders 24/7 you will not surpass that in terms of profit (the market value per day).

Low Value Markets
Many new traders will expand very quickly initially using low-value items, but there is always a limit to the quantity you can shift and you will either have to increase the item count you trade or the value of the items you trade in order to continue to employ as much of your capital as possible.

Driving up Revenue and Profit
I've always worked on a very simple principle, I'll spread my capital over no more than 25-40 items on average and this list changes from time to time. I'll only trade items where I'll make a profit either in the long or short term and thus I engage all my capital into this list. My strategy is not penny pinching on profit, instead a full focus on pushing through as much revenue as possible. To me a sale is a sale and as long as their's margin in the item the more revenue in a month the more profit. As soon as an item is reporting as low profit I'll cut it loose and look for another.

Item List
I would take a serious look at your item list and determine which items need to be cut loose and then investigate new items all the time. Many traders fall flat because they try to trade too many items or in too many locations at once, or too soon.

Outsourcing Transport
Lastly, as soon as you can I would recommend selling your transport ships - RedFrog and PushX are great services for this, if your dedication is trading then your limited amount of time is best spent docked up and doing what you do best - otherwise you might miss that big trade, or mistype by a buyer.


Hopefully some of that is useful!

I am enjoying this thread so far! Reserving this spot for when I add some later.

My first recommendation to OP is, dont do something such as::

You have 20 billion isk. You then Place all isk into buy orders for plex station trading in Jita. Market gets volatile or price drops, and now your stock has made you lose a billion or more in isk. Always diversify a decent bit at minimum.

This also, is very important as your capital starts to snowball

Lots of good info here! ^^^
Jyak it sounds to me like there are two main challenges for you:

• firstly to simply apply your funds to something profitable, and by extension, improve on and learn new ways to trade and actually use the isk you have;
• and secondly to do all of this without burning yourself out and ragequitting Eve.

I'll try to address these with answers to your specific questions:

1. Would it be more profitable to focus on few hubs?

Yes, but with a BIG caveat. Logically thinking, if you're doing station-trading and a form of inter-market-hub trading as you are, if you train Tycoon to level five and utilise all 305 market order slots you have over all the hubs, that will give you the most opportunity to max out your profits. Having said that, unless you have no job/family (which you do) it'll be hard to keep on top of all of this due to the competition in the hubs. Ultimately, it's perhaps not the most viable thing to do. Having said this, while I'm competent at station and hub trading I'm no hero at it and it's not my bread and butter when it comes to trading, and there are others here who would run rings around me on this type of market operations. Plus it bores me to death. My point is that there may be very effective ways to get around your station trading challenges super effectively without having to quit your job, but I'm not aware of them.



2. With the information I've given above, what do you feel my most profitable strategy would be?

If I had the time and inclination, and wanted to continue exactly the same type of trading, personally I would increase the number items I was trading and start using a hauling corp to get my stuff moved between stations as mentioned initially by Isaac Schwartz. That may not be a perfect solution but again, this isn't my forte.

Alternatively I would start trading outside of the hubs in smaller systems (including nullsec if you have access (preferably) to non-npc sov space in 0.0). This is my bread and butter type of trading (albiet mostly in highsec) and it can be set up such that it's surprisingly passive. Remember, while there are huge numbers of pilots in the hubs, there are MANY more pilots spread around the rest of the universe and ALL of them have items to sell any and items they want to buy. You can tap into this. It's totally possible to PLEX your account by focusing on just a couple of highsec systems that have only two to three percent of the population of Jita on average, and keeping the operation fairly passive and without the 0.01 isk competition madness that drains so much time.
If you want a primer on inter-regional trading check this out : www.evemogul.info



3. As traders accumulate more isk, 2B, 5B, 10B, what do they typically start doing with the extra? More expensive but slower moving items with tighter margins? Minerals? PLEX?

I can't answer this with regards to station trading, but when it comes to pure non-market-hub inter-regional trading I simply buy more obscure and/or more valuable items. Once I max out a character's market slots available (i.e. Tycoon 5) I just start using a second character. As my trading methods are reasonably passive once an area is set up having many hundreds or thousands of market orders are reasonably easy to manage without spending an inordinate amount of time on it.



4. If you were me, what opportunities would you be looking for?

Speaking from experience as someone who had to have fairly passive trading methods due to time constraints (job, family, etc) I'd be looking for places to buy and sell my items in areas with much less competition, and leverage the power that having an item up on the market for 90 days in a low competition area provides.



5. How does a trader stay organized? While I have Eve Mogul and my spreadsheets, it feels a bit chaotic. I have several items for sale at several different hubs. I don't even know what most of it is/does. Does trading always feel this way? What could I do to fell like I have it organized?

All of the third party software and spreadsheets are probably great for station trading, although as I'm not into station trading so much I'm not the best person to comment on them. Oh, and the fact that I've never had a reason to use them.

With inter-regional trading I ensure that I utilise fairly low competition systems, so even having thousands of orders up it still feels like it's all moving fairly slowly due to lack of competition and there's no feeling of being overwhelmed. Don't confuse my comment about it feeling like it moves slowly with lack of returns though, I just believe it's a smarter way to trade from a time perspective. I've never actually found the need to use anything other than the quickbar folders in the market window, I guess my trading style just lends itself well to that and I make enough isk that I simply don't care about getting any additional minor efficiencies that trading software might provide. Each to their own I suppose.



6. Any general advice is appreciated.

Start looking outside the hubs and move away from station trading unless you really enjoy it (or unless you stop working and can sit on Eve 23.5/7). Utilise the 90 day time limit available for putting up orders, and do on both buy and sell orders in systems and areas that don't have huge competition (note: this will take a little research however, all worthwhile things in Eve generally do). And have a look at the video linked above, it's a very basic primer on inter-regional trading and will possibly help you to ascertain if it's a direction you'd like to go in.

Hope it helps!
Cheers,
EM