Market Discussions

Free market, man.

Someone is accepting that level of collateral, you have no choice but to compete.

Red Frog for example allows for up to 1 Bil ISK collateral, even if you're paying just a couple of Mil.

People value their stuff, they don't base it off market prices. If I for example haul a bunch of minerals worth 500m jita price, I'll put it up for 700m. Why? because I value my time.

You're right that haulers don't get paid a lot, which is why lots of traders outsource their hauling to other players. Rather than working for someone else, why not try trading yourself and see if you still want to haul after you start making ISK?

You buy stuff then sell it for more isk than you paid. Taking into account NPC taxes.

The hard part of trading is knowing what items to buy. You really need to research the price history of an item to find out if its profitable.

if you want to trade, buy low, sell high. Some people will do it in the same station. Some will transport goods from region to region.

But if you are going to transport goods in a T1 Hauler, be very prepared to die often, especially around major trade hubs.

If you're just starting out try running some distribution missions. Instead of your Tayra grab a Badger (because they align faster and still have the cargo for the missions) and go find some agents in systems with a lot of connections. Doing these missions is pretty boring but if you get a good level 3 agent you can grind standings pretty fast as well while building up the capital you'll need to do some trading. My recommendation, once you get access to level 3 agents, is to head over to Itamo and run missions for Totsikka Enakiri from Rapid Assembly. This agent is nice because the average mission is only 1.5 jumps and only takes a few minutes. It's also 2 jumps from Jita so you can do some research on the markets for which items you want to buy, and even buy and sell in Jita when you have a couple skills trained. To get your Caldari Navy standings up (Caldari Navy and Caldari faction standings are what affect your Broker's Fee in Jita) just do 15 missions in Itamo and then head to Sobaseki to do the 16th, where the storyline agent is from Caldari Navy. Good luck.

I use the following to work out collateral:

Goods I intend to sell at present market prices and do not expect trouble moving: 99.5% of sell order price
Goods I intend to sell after minor market manipulation: 98% of what I hope to sell them for
Goods I intend to use in production: 105% of purchase price, plus 150% of consequential losses I'd suffer due to supply chain disruption.
Goods intended for personal consumption (e.g. moving 20 gank Vexors and fittings to a place I'm staging ganks from): 105% of purchase price, plus 100m per 10 minutes of lost 'fun time' if they don't get there


Collaterals can be, of course, set much higher if I intend the courier to fail, although I haven't done that for a while (never really got any takers on trap contracts).