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Beginner trader - need advice for specific situation
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Brody Chanlin
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2011-12-10 12:38:16 UTC
I have started to trade and to my surprise making money was easy!

I started by station trading low cost -> high turn over modules because I had very little isk. I recently started playing with PI but it turned out I lost nearly 10m on 30m invested, not good!

I noticed a massive opportunity in the market based on buy low/sell high and was only able to trade less than 3 modules at any one time but making around 2.5m profit per item.

Finally after a few hours I was creeping towards 50m and decided to increase my turn around by buying stock 9 jumps away and still make 2m per item. Rather than waiting for buy orders to fill at 2.5m profit per item. Eventually I was able to use both, leaving buy orders running while I was out collecting additional stock to increase the stock I have at any one time, this seemed to be working fine (I was making money finally!)

This has been working great, but now I have a problem, I worked my way to 80m by leaving my orders up over night and bought a fresh batch of stock, the prices were still floating around the same figures as last night. However now it seems others who trade in this item have awoken and the competitiveness is high, orders are being updated very quickly and it is hard to keep my sell orders in the forefront, so much so there has started to be quite a price drop brining profit down to nearly 1m per item with some fairly large sell orders cropping up, I can only assume these are people who have had buy orders running and can drop the price and still get more profit back than me.

What should I be doing in this situation?

Do I dump my stock and take the 1m profit per item as soon as possible or hold out for the market to clear out and hope I can return to 2m+ per item?
Cendres Ange
Frontier Venture
#2 - 2011-12-10 12:57:30 UTC
All depends on if you need money now or figure you could do without it for a while.

Improve sorting of orders

Custom window presets
Brody Chanlin
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#3 - 2011-12-10 12:59:11 UTC
I am earning a little bit from PI now and I have 20m liquid isk which will be going into the next trade item so I can wait, it means the difference in 80m return and somthing like 130m return.
kla samon
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#4 - 2011-12-10 13:58:57 UTC
Since your bankroll is fairly small dump it now and move on to something else. 1 mil profit now is better than 2 mil profit at some unknown time in the future. Churn and burn baby!

Once you are sitting on a fat pile of isk you can take your time and hold reserve stock piles of items.
Pater Samuel
Event Horizon Ships
#5 - 2011-12-10 14:12:17 UTC
I agree with Kla Samon. Keep your momentum. These 1 Mil you could have could be worth much more then 2 Mil, until you could have these in the future. And its more fun to keep trading then to wait for this price rise.
Callduron
Dreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
#6 - 2011-12-10 15:07:22 UTC
I agree you shouldn't wait at this stage in your trading career. Later on effort becomes more important than margin and traders won't want to work hard to earn isk.

If you are willing to work though have you considered moving your stock elsewhere? Take it to a different hub where prices are high and the competition is asleep at the wheel.

I write http://stabbedup.blogspot.co.uk/

I post on reddit as /u/callduron.
David Forge
GameOn Inc.
#7 - 2011-12-10 16:42:39 UTC
Sell it now, rinse and repeat. What you're seeing is probably the market returning to a normal buy/sell price spread so count yourself lucky for doing business when prices were out of equilibrium and don't feel like you're taking a loss now when you're selling at what is probably closer to the true price.
Tasko Pal
Spallated Garniferous Schist
#8 - 2011-12-10 17:32:05 UTC
kla samon wrote:
Since your bankroll is fairly small dump it now and move on to something else. 1 mil profit now is better than 2 mil profit at some unknown time in the future. Churn and burn baby!

Once you are sitting on a fat pile of isk you can take your time and hold reserve stock piles of items.


Ditto with the other dittos. It's rare to find five people agreeing in a row.
Brody Chanlin
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#9 - 2011-12-10 17:55:38 UTC
Wow, thanks guys.

Much appreciated, nice to see this forum being much more welcoming than GD, I always read the forums but avoid posting.

Thank you.
OllieNorth
Recidivists Incorporated
#10 - 2011-12-10 20:22:49 UTC
Brody Chanlin wrote:
Wow, thanks guys.

Much appreciated, nice to see this forum being much more welcoming than GD, I always read the forums but avoid posting.

Thank you.



This is rare, even here, but it was a decent question. I agree, keep your stock moving. On top of that, don't kill yourself trying to find the perfect item. You can make decent profits on a LOT of things. Trying to find the home-run item is difficult, so focus on rolling profits first.
Brody Chanlin
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#11 - 2011-12-10 20:32:46 UTC
Yeah today has defiantly shown me the downside of trading.

I had to pop out for a few hours but had not dumped the stock and by the time I got back the market had crashed completely, I am referring to 10MN Micro warp drive II's (since the market has bummed out I figure there is no harm in revealing this now).

I lost about 10m on those last buy orders and have not managed to recover that yet, I have one remaining item that is selling fast and provides about 80% to 100% profit (double up on the buy orders), it is quite competitive but at least it is moving.

Thank you for the advice about not seeking the home run, I will continue working on establishing a pace rather than a bank roll.
Cendres Ange
Frontier Venture
#12 - 2011-12-10 20:45:14 UTC  |  Edited by: Cendres Ange
Another good thing to do to make money fast is to not put all eggs in one basket.

If you have 10 m to spare, put up buy orders for many diffrent goods, like 10 diffrent orders. As time passes and your orders are filled, you can put up small sellorders giving you more money to spend on small buyorders. You get alot of orders to manage, but you can build momentum fast. Why? Selling just 1 good makes you vulnerable to price changes, with more orders, less chance of someone undercutting you. AND you increase the amount of potential customers, not everyone wants a 10mn afterburner.

As your wallet grows bigger, widen with more goods and increase volume of your buy orders. Try not to buy too much of since the market will drop sooner or later, leaving you with stuff with small profit.

Improve sorting of orders

Custom window presets
Xuzi
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#13 - 2011-12-10 21:03:38 UTC
The great thing about trading is that you really can learn something new every day, especially when you are starting out. Also, the more you learn about other aspects of eve (missioning, PvP, invention, manufacturing, ship fitting, exploration, moon mining, WHs, etc etc), the more you'll understand the market. Even staring at an eve map (especially the 2D maps by ombey) can provide useful trading insights.

Also ditto the other dittos. Once you have more capital to work with though, don't be afraid of investing in longer positions. Eventually time and patience can work for you if you have the market order slots available and more capital than you know what to do with. Keep the snowball rolling, but don't burn yourself out on one cent warrioring. Be sure to stay diversified to a certain extent.
Callduron
Dreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
#14 - 2011-12-10 22:20:46 UTC
What you probably saw, Brody, was patchday speculation. You got in after the peak and bought on the downslope.

What happens when Eve receives content patches is the game changes, people want to play with the new shinies and traders anticipate the demand. It was reasonably clear that a lot of people would want T3 battlecruisers, would pvp in them and so would use standard pvp modules like a MWD.

As you play the game more, as you trade more, it becomes very interesting watching and anticipating market trends. It's not time wasted imo, it's valuable learning. All of us have made mistakes and lost money at some point, it goes with the territory.

Good luck with your next big trade and welcome to MD.

I write http://stabbedup.blogspot.co.uk/

I post on reddit as /u/callduron.
Brody Chanlin
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#15 - 2011-12-10 22:22:13 UTC
Thank you all.
Shar Tegral
#16 - 2011-12-10 22:44:08 UTC
OllieNorth wrote:
This is rare, even here, but it was a decent question.

The question was rare, the response was not.

The Question:

1 - Contained enough information. No more, no less.

2 - You didn't call others idiots.

3 - You typed it like you are not an idiot.

4 - You didn't come off as a whiner or some self entitled buffoon.

I've found that when the above criteria is met, a rare happenstance, the response is almost always helpful and favorable.
Pater Samuel
Event Horizon Ships
#17 - 2011-12-11 20:56:20 UTC
A hint I read at this forum was "Investing to heavily in T1 or T2 items is not wise, as they can be produced. Meta Items are found by chance, so the supply is random, the demand is not". Good Meta Items (sometimes difficult to see which that could be) sell well because of the reduced skill req. But if a producer dumps his stock of T2 items, a price crash can happen.
Ilinea
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#18 - 2011-12-11 21:56:01 UTC
You actually made the mistake to invest everything you have into one item. Always split your investments over several different things, that way if you get burned on one, it won't be that big of a loss. What you should also avoid is to invest everything in too expensive items. "Expensive" is what will cost a big amount of your isk in hand.

You also started increasing your stock on this item just as you had more money to reinvst. Before you do this, you should always check the price history. Check if the volume you get might be too high for a fast turnaround. This is especially important as a small trader, who can't and shouldn't stock up anything. Also look out for inflated prices, you notice them if they have been the days or weeks before much lower. Then you should expectthat the price could move down again.

I would also say, at the small amount you have in your hand, avoid Jita for that kind of trading at all costs! Unless you know how the market moves, which takes much time and experience to learn, you should perform at this stage better on other hubs. Jita is in many ways different than other hubs and you are at higher risks there.

Also keep in mind, that something that performs good today might not be tomorrow. The reasons can be many. One example: a manufacturer dropping a huge amount on the market while it was near empty the day before.

Those are just some precautions you should take.

They told me to mine... and I started to mine, the market ;)
Brody Chanlin
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#19 - 2011-12-12 09:45:14 UTC
Thanks again for the advice all.

I have moved out of Jita and into a popular Gallente mission hub to try a slightly different approach, so far it has been a little easier and not so much .01 isk'ing.

I am hoping to find additional opportunities with this relocation, such as some hauling and running some missions to get an idea of the loot produced in missions.

The advice in this thread is much appreciated, thank you to all who took the time to read and contribute.